During the recruitment process with your employee, you will typically discuss and mutually agree when they are available to work. This agreement can be reflected in SocialSchedules 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 sets.

There are two types of availability:

Available

This 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 be scheduled anywhere else.

Unavailable

This is when an employee prefers not to work: for example, they may have study or family commitments.

Each un/availability set has a start and end date, and multiple sets can be 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 two weeks.

Date-specific availability

One-off availability is when an employee is not available to work on a specific date and / or specific time period within that day. For example, they may have a dentist appointment between 1pm-3pm on Friday 12th May, a time on a typical Friday where they would normally be available; or they may wish to go on vacation for the period Monday 1st February - Sunday 7th February.

One-off availability requests such as these should be submitted as time off requests.

Submitting time off requests is explained in a separate article.

The method of accessing employee availability is controlled by the Manager sub-permissions assigned to the user; 'Manage Company Network & Worker Profile' and/or 'Manage Availability' The following table describes these access methods;

You can view employee availability from your Mobile Device or from a Responsive Desktop via a web browser.

Users with the Manage company network and worker profiles permission can view availability for a specific employee from the Responsive Desktop by navigating to Network > Employee > Availability.

Users without the Manage company network and worker profiles permission can view availability for a specific employee from the Responsive Desktop by navigating to Scheduler > Employee > View Availability.

To view the details of an individual set, simply click on it.

Create Availability

Managers require the Manage Availability permission in order to create, edit, approve, decline or delete availability sets, or to receive availability related notifications.

To create availability on behalf of an employee from a Responsive Desktop (method for the majority of users), click on 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 will start and end. 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 are requesting by dragging your cursor in the week view.

You can select multiple days and times within the one availability set, as long as they repeat for the same period of time (weekly / every 2 weeks).

Click the Save button to save the availability set.

A confirmation screen will appear where you can choose to enter a message to your employee about the availability you have created. When you are ready to send it, select Confirm. A message will be sent to the employee to inform them of the availability that has been created.

Conflicts

If the availability you have created conflicts with one of more of the employee's existing unavailability sets, or availability sets for another employer, the set will not be created. You will be informed of the conflict via a pop-up on the screen.

To 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 pencil icon in the top right hand corner. This will bring up the Edit availability set screen.

Select the attribute/s you want to update.

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 ready to submit, select Confirm. The changes will be submitted to the employee for approval.

When an employee edits an existing available set, you must approve it before it is considered live. 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

To see what changes have been made to an availability set awaiting your approval, click Show changes.

This will bring up a list of what has changed from the original set.

To accept or decline the request, simply click on the applicable button.

Conflicts

Similar to when you are creating an availability set, the app will check that the availability does not conflict with one of the employee's existing un/availability sets when you edit or approve a set.

If it does, you will see an error message.