If you usually collect your team's availability when scheduling, perhaps because you work with freelancers, students or casual workers, then you are probably used to negotiating through random emails, Whatsapp or Slack messages.
Well, good news - your team can send their availability from their Surfboard schedule!
How do my surfers submit availability?
Availability is a setting that can be toggled on or off for surfers to suit their contracts. You can turn this feature on for surfers from the settings ⚙️ button within the surfer page.
Surfers can then submit their availability for each week, including the earliest and latest they can work that day. Surfers can submit as many periods as needed to cover their availability.
Read our surfer guide to learn more about how they submit their availability.
How do I view my team's availability?
Any availability that your team submits, edits or deletes is updated in the manager's schedule right away.
Availability is shown in the schedule as an availability block. The blocks are marked as 'available' and have a 👋 emoji on them.
You can choose to hide or show availability blocks from the schedule using the filter bar.
You can then check your surfers' availability when scheduling shifts, to make sure you schedule shifts that fit around their other commitments. Information about their availability is shown as a block in the schedule, and as an alert when adding or editing shifts.
💡 Top tip
When you click on an availability block, Surfboard will automatically pre-fill the form with a custom shift of the same length to make scheduling even faster.
💡 Top tip
You can use availability as an alternative way to organise additional shifts like evenings and weekends. Instead of creating a fixed round-robin, you could instead ask surfers to volunteer which date works best for them.
FAQs
Can surfers edit their availability?
Can surfers edit their availability?
Yes, surfers can edit or delete their availability once submitted. Any updates will be reflected in your schedule immediately.
Can I schedule shifts outside of their availability?
Can I schedule shifts outside of their availability?
Yes, you will not be blocked from scheduling any shifts outside of the times a surfer has said they are available
Can surfers tell me when they are unavailable too?
Can surfers tell me when they are unavailable too?
Surfboard does not yet have this functionality, but our team are working on this as a future improvement for this feature. You can feedback any ideas or requests to our team at any time using our Intercom live chat.
How do surfers know how much availability to input?
How do surfers know how much availability to input?
When adding availability, surfers are reminded of their contractual weekly hours so that they can make sure they're giving at least that much availability.
I only want to use this feature for certain times of the year, is that possible?
I only want to use this feature for certain times of the year, is that possible?
Yes, you can turn this feature on or off whenever you want to from the settings ⚙️ button within the surfer page.
Alternatively, you can leave the feature enabled for whenever you may need it - for example, if you wanted to know who volunteers to work a bank holiday