In order to create a schedule it is helpful to know who is available, and when.
If you have this feature enabled, team members can submit their availability through their profile. They can also indicate how many days in a specific week they wish to work.
Options for availability
When specifying availability, team members have three options:
Green: Available all day
Red: Unavailable all day
Orange: Unavailable at (a) specific time(s)
If someone is on leave, you will see a purple marker. A blue marker means the team member is scheduled to work a shift that day.
Team members can also enter the desired number of workdays in a week. This information is useful when creating schedules. You can find this information on the schedule. In case you surpass the amount of shifts indicated, this number will turn red.
Availability on the schedule
How does this show on the schedule? In the planning, you find information that will help you schedule, and choose the right team member for a shift.
If you are on the page planning per team, check under the 'Show' button if availability is enabled. You get to see the available and unavailable team members under each other per day. You can drag them to a shift.
If you are on the page planning per team member, check under the 'Show' button if availability status is enabled. You see the availability of a team member for each day of the week. Or you can see when someone is on leave or sick.
⚠️ Note: If someone is unavailable, you can still schedule them, but the schedule will indicate that there is a conflict.
Furthermore, on top by the dates, you see whether this functionality is open or closed. If this information does not show, go to the 'Show' button to activate it. If it says 'availability varies', this means there are multiple venues that do not all have the same status.
Good to know: the 'admins' and 'managers' can overrule the availability settings, both for themselves and for others. Learn more about 'roles' here.
These are the basics of availability. There is a lot more that you can do with it. For example, you can set up an automatic deadline (auto-close), so that the period in which team members can submit their availability will close automatically.
You can also set up a minimum staffing. This determines how many team members you need at least per team per day. With this setting, you avoid having too few team members available on a specific day.
Read everything about availability in the manuals.