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 > 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 different weeks of preferences staff are stored. It can range between 1 and 12 weeks.

* Weekly Preferences Reporting with remembered preferences disabled.

With rolling preferences disabled, shift availability reports will now display the contract default availability when searching for availability beyond the current weekly preference 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.

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.

Availability Report with quick mode

The Weekly Availability Report allows you to choose the duration to view (anything from a single day to a full month). You can also choose a specific start date rather than a fixed week view.

The skill selection is multiple-choice, which shows each skill down the page and allows staff to be displayed in multiple skills at once.

This report also has two levels of detail: the original complex level, which will look at contract limits, rest periods, and more for every hour (and is very slow), and a new, 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.

Step 3

View your Changes

Once you have finished, click Save Changes. Under Weekly Availability Reports, you can generate an availability report to view upcoming availability. 

To view a specific Staff Member's Availability, you can go to the Staff Member's profile, check the availability tab, and view their upcoming availability and work preferences.

Staff Members can set these preferences under their profile under My Availability.  Availability preferences now support three options: available, unavailable and prefer not to work. 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 prefer not to. 

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