During the recruitment process with your employer, your availability will typically be discussed and mutually agreed. Once agreement has been reached, you can set your availability to the agreed days and times of the week. This availability is then reflected for your employer. Any subsequent changes to your availability should first be discussed with your employer and changes mutually agreed by both parties.

There are two types of availability you can set:

Available

This is when you are available to work for an employer. Setting availability for an employer means you are exclusively available for this employer during these times and cannot be scheduled anywhere else.

When you create an available set for an employer you will automatically be shown as unavailable during these times for all other employers. You do not need to create a separate unavailable set.

Unavailable

This is when you are not available to work: for example, you may not be able to work on Tuesday and Thursday mornings as you have lectures at college. Unavailable sets can be created either for a single employer or multiple employer.

Each availability set has a start and end date, and you can create multiple sets.

Recurring availability

Both availability and unavailability sets are created as recurring availability, meaning your availability or unavailability repeats.

You can choose to set the recurrence as either every week or every 2 weeks.

Date-specific availability

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

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

Submitting time off requests is explained in a separate article.

You can set your availability from your Mobile Device or from a Responsive Desktop via a web browser. The following is the process for setting your availability from the Desktop App.

When logged in to SocialSchedules, go to My Availability

Click on the 'Add Availability' button to bring up the Add Availability screen

First, select the type of set you wish to create (either Available or Unavailable).

Next, select the employer this availability set will apply to.

Now, select the dates and times of your availability.

You can select multiple days and times within the one availability set, as long as they repeat for the same period of time.

Next, select whether the availability set will repeat every week or every 2 weeks.

Finally, 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.

When you have completed all of the required fields, click the Publish Availability button.

Availability sets are listed under My Availability.

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

Find the availability set you wish to edit.

If you are in the detailed view, click on the pencil icon in the top right.

If you are on the My Availability view, click on the ellipsis under Actions and select Edit Set.

Select the attribute/s you want to update.

For available sets:

Click the Send Request button to submit the changes.

A confirmation screen will appear, where you can choose to enter a message to your manager about why you are making the changes. When you are ready to submit, select Confirm. The changes will be submitted to your manager for approval.

For unavailable sets:

Click the Publish Changes button to make the changes live. Unavailable sets do not require manager approval so are instantly set live.

Approval Process

Unavailable sets do not require manager approval when they are created or edited.

Available sets do not require manager approval when they are created; however any changes will require manager approval. Your manager will receive a notification asking for their approval before the changes are considered active.

To Approve or Decline an Availability Request

At times, your manager may create an available set on your behalf. If this does not conflict with one of your existing un/availability sets, then it will be automatically created and set as active.

Any changes to existing availability requested by your manager require your approval before they are considered active. You can choose to either approve or decline the request.

Managers cannot create or edit unavailability sets. These are exclusively owned by you.

Any sets requiring your approval can be found under My Availability with a status of Pending approval · from you.

Additionally, you will receive a notification alerting you to this.

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.

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

Conflicts

When you are creating, editing, or approving an availability set, the app will check that your availability does not conflict with an existing availability set.

If you try to create an available set for the same days/times as an existing available set for another employer, you will see an error message preventing you from creating the set.

If you try to create an available set for the same days/time as an existing unavailable set for the same employer or you try to create an unavailable set for the same days/times as an existing available set for the same employer, you will see a warning message and asked if you would like to proceed.

Where both an available and unavailable set exist for the same times, you will be considered available during this time and your employer will be able to schedule you.