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Employee "Availability" on the Scheduler
Employee "Availability" on the Scheduler

Entered on App or on People page, but reviewable on the Schedule

Tori avatar
Written by Tori
Updated over a week ago

Employee Availability is a key part of the Rotageek app and platform.  If you're Autoscheduling, you need good ways to tell the Autoscheduler what days a person does and doesn't work (usually, or this particular week).  You might want to be able to plan people's days-off in the week, or leave notes for yourself or other rota-administrators about days off ('unavailability') you've agreed with a particular employee. You may even want to allow your employees to enter their own Availability directly, through the App.

Seeing Availability that has been entered

All Availability appears on the Scheduler, against the individual days for which it's been entered for this person.  Ultimately this is where Availability matters most - it should direct when a person can (and can't) be scheduled. A Person's Availability is visible on the scheduler to help with scheduling decisions, as seen on the screenshot below:

If you do not want to see a person's Availability on the Scheduler you can toggle the visibility on the 'View Section' (as seen on the screenshot below.

Whether shown on the Scheduler or not, if you attempt to schedule someone for a day/time-window that they're Unavailable, you'll get a warning to tell you of this 'conflict'.  It's never a binding constraint though - if you decide you want to press ahead and schedule this person despite this warning, Rotageek won't stop you.

However, the Autoscheduler will always treat Unavailability as binding.  Employees will never receive shifts from the Autoscheduler that overlap with a period that they're unavailable.

Entering Availability

Availability entered via the Weekly Work Pattern on the People page is assumed to be 'recurrent every week' so is automatically shown on every single week on the Scheduler.  
Non-weekly-recurring Availability (date-specific availability) can be entered via the Availability feature.  If your company is set up for and you have the permission for this, you will find it in your left-hand Menu bar ("Availability").  It's possible to allow 'just managers' to use this tool, or, to allow the employee themselves to do their own - it depends on your company set-up.
You can also add or amend Availability directly from the Scheduler.  You can add it via the same box that you add Shifts on the Scheduler: it's the third tab of this box, after Shift and Leave.  If there's an entry already there (either one you just added or from their Weekly Work Pattern), click on it to Edit it (for example: to mark someone as Available on a day that according to their pattern they would normally be Unavailable).

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