Setting up Staff Availability

In this article, we will discuss how you can create and manage Staff Availability and the formatting options available to you.

Step 1

Setting up Staff Availability Preferences

To set up staff availability, you must go to System > Departments & Venues > Manage Venues.

Then, pick your Venue and click on Edit Venue > Shift Configuration > Staff Availability.  From here you can begin customising the fields available. 

Step 2

Formatting Options

Once you are on the Staff Availability Panel, you can start customising which features you would like to put in place as default when managing what staff members can put in for their Availability Preferences.

Weekly Preferences - This sets how many weeks that staff availability preferences are stored. This can range between 1 and 12 weeks.

Start Date for Preferences - Select a date for the series of weeks to start. The weeks will repeat forever from this date. We'll change this date to the nearest Monday.

Level of Detail - This option asks you how precise do you want to allow staff to set their availability to in minute increments. The system allows this range to be hourly, by 30 minute increments or 15 minute increments.

Allow two levels of request? - Allow staff to provide both unavailability (times when they cannot work) and prefer not to work.

Maximum Reserved Hours - You will then be asked how many hours each staff can ask not to work each week (max 168). 

Minimum Gap - You can also choose to enforce a gap between reserved hours to prevent abuse of the reserved hours limit by adding one block of reserved time every few hours. These gaps are measured by increasing blocks of time.

Show Week Numbers  - Another option, if you have multiple weeks, you can choose to include the week number as a label. This is helpful if it matches other schedules that use weeks or you simply want to label the weeks. The numbers will repeat once you reach the last week.

Staff Choice of Hours - You can also allow staff to choose the hours they would like to work each week between their contract's expected hours and general limit.

Remember Preferences - You can choose to enable the system to remember the hours staff asked not to work last time, so they only need to make changes. This is useful for regular staff members with regular external commitments.

Lock Weekly Preferences - If you choose this option it will prevent staff based at this venue from editing their weekly preferences once set.

Reservable Hours - Finally, as a manager, you can set reserved hours that staff can't reserve themselves. Select the hours that your staff can reserve. Green means they can reserve these hours if requested. Red means they will always be available. Changes will only apply the next time your staff change their reserved hours. Once you have finished, click Save Changes. 
 

Step 3

Setting availability

Staff Members can then set their preferences under their profile under My Availability. Availability preferences now support three options: available, unavailable and prefer not to work (If you have allowed levels of request). This allows you to see in more detail who can and would prefer not to work certain days or times. It also allows managers to differentiate between times staff absolutely can’t work, and times they can work if needed but would prefer not to. 

Times you have locked as always available will appear as dark green.

Step 4

Viewing individual staff member's availability

Now you should be set up. Once you have configured your settings and your staff have input their availability you will be able to view specific staff member's availability. This can be accessed via a staff member's profile, where you can check the Availability tab, and view their upcoming availability and work preferences.
 

Viewing availability in Shift Schedule

You are also able to get an overview on all of your staff member's availability under the Shift Schedule. You can see this by going to Shifts > Manage Shift Schedule. This offers an overview on each staff member's availability on each day and is shown at the top of each day as bar. If the staff member is available the bar will be green, if there are issues with availability the bar will become a stripy orange. As you can see below, the bar tells you what time of day, roughly, they are available as well. This is helpful as an overview when you want to quickly add shifts as you can see at a glance whether a staff member is available for a shift before you even click to add a shift.   

Availability Reports

You are also able to see an overview of staff availability via our availability report. This can be found via Reports > Staff Reports > Weekly Availability Report.

Weekly Availability Report

The Weekly Availability Report allows you to view recent availability for a large number of staff. Under settings you can choose the duration to view (anything from a single day to a full month). One filter option is to filter to see only specific venues.

You can also filter which staff members to view by filtering by Roles/Skills. 

The skill selection is multiple-choice, and if selected, shows each skill down the page (it also allows staff to be displayed in multiple skills at once).

In addition to this you can also filter by specific staff by typing in their name, if you want to see the specific availability of certain staff.

Quick report VS Complex report

This report also has two levels of detail: the original complex level, which will show you staff availability, taking into account contract limits, rest periods, and much more (which can be quite a slow process). 

The other option is a faster option to get general availability. This general availability will look at contract dates, required documents, work eligibility documents, booked holidays, planned absences, availability preferences and planned shifts. It is designed to provide a quick and easy view of general availability across the team.