Introduction
During the recruitment process with your employee, you will typically discuss and mutually agree on when they can work. This agreement can get reflected in Workforce by creating availability sets.
Managers and Administrators can view these availability sets within the app.
Administrators and managers with the "Manage availability" permission can also create availability sets on behalf of their employees or request changes to existing availability sets.
Types of Availability
There are two types of availability:
Available - This type is when an employee is available to work for an employer. Setting availability means the employee is exclusively available for this employer during these times and cannot get scheduled anywhere else.
Unavailable - This type is when an employee prefers not to work: for example, they may have study or family commitments.
Each availability set has a start and end date, and multiple sets can get created.
Recurring Availability
Both availability and unavailability sets are created as recurring availability, meaning availability or unavailability repeats.
Availability sets can repeat either every week or every 2 weeks.
Date-Specific Availability
One-off availability is when an employee is unavailable to work on a specific date or period within that day. For example, they may have a dentist appointment between 1 pm - 3 pm on Friday, May 12, a time on a Friday when they would typically be available; or they may wish to go on vacation from Monday, February 1 to Sunday, February 7.
One-off availability requests such as these should get submitted as time-off requests. Managing time off requests is explained in a separate article.
Viewing Availability
You can view employee availability from your Mobile Device or a Desktop via a web browser.
Users with the “Manage company employees and employee profiles” permission can view availability for a specific employee from the Responsive Desktop by navigating to Employees > Employee Name > Availability.
Users without the "Manage company employees and employee profiles" permission can view availability for a specific employee from the Desktop by navigating to Scheduler > Employee > View Availability.
To view the details of an individual set, click on it.
Create Availability
Managers require the "Manage Availability" permission to create, edit, approve, decline, or delete availability sets or receive availability-related notifications.
To create availability on behalf of an employee from a Desktop (method for most users), click the Set Availability button on the Availability screen. Managers can only create available sets for employees; they cannot create unavailable sets.
Select whether the availability set will repeat every week or every 2 weeks.
Select when the availability set starts and ends. You can also select "Indefinitely" as the end date, meaning there is no end date for the availability set.
Select the dates and times of the availability you request by dragging your cursor in the week view.
You can select multiple days and times within the one availability set if they repeat for the same period.
To save the availability set, click the Save button.
A confirmation screen will appear where you can choose to enter a message to your employee about the availability. When you are ready to submit, select Confirm. A notification will be sent to the employee
The availability set will be instantly set 'live', provided it does not conflict with one of the employee's existing availability or unavailability sets.
Edit Availability
You can request changes to an employee's existing available set. You cannot request changes to unavailable sets.
To request changes to an existing available set, click on the vertical ellipses icon in the top right-hand corner; this will bring up the Edit availability set screen.
Select the attribute/s you want to update.
Repeats | Can be changed |
Starts | Cannot be changed if the set is active |
Ends | Can be changed |
Days/Times | Can be changed |
To submit the request, click the Send Request button.
A confirmation screen will appear where you can choose to enter a message to your employee about why you are requesting the change. When you are ready to submit, select Confirm to forward to the employee for approval.
To Approve or Decline an Availability Request
When an employee edits an existing available set, you must approve it before it is considered active. Changes to unavailable sets do not require manager approval.
Any sets requiring your approval will have a status of pending approval · from management.
There are two ways to approve or decline a request:
From the Availability View
Click on the ellipsis under the Actions column against the set you wish to action, and choose either Approve or Decline.
From the Detailed View
Click Show Changes to see what changes have been made to an availability set awaiting your approval.
The Availability Changes screen will list what has changed from the original set.
To accept or decline the request, click on the relevant button.
Conflicts
When creating, editing, or approving an availability set for an employee, the app will check that the availability does not conflict with one of the employee's existing availability sets.
If it does, you will see an error message.
