🔓 Access level in Planday: Administrator, Schedule manager

ℹ️ Important read: Scheduling explained; Schedule - FAQs and troubleshooting

⏱️ Reading time: 5 min.

✅ Required steps: Create or edit shifts.

🟡 Are your employees contractually bound to specific work hours? Use Contracted availability or Working time rules to manage their schedules more accurately.

For employees, see How to set your work availability in Planday.

What is availability?

Availability is a tool that allows employees to communicate their preferred working hours and times they are unable to work. This feature eases the scheduling process, leading to a more efficient schedule that minimises stress for both managers and staff by reducing the need for frequent shift swaps and cases of no-shows.

Begin by having your employees input their availability preferences for a period and lock it down. This information will then serve as a guide when creating schedules and when seeking to fill open shifts.

Good to know:

Even if an employee marks themselves as unavailable, you can still schedule them for work if needed. However, having insight into their availability helps reduce back-and-forth communication, avoid unnecessary shift swaps and minimise the risk of no-shows.
Encourage employees to submit their availability preferences in advance by a specific day. Once received, lock these preferences to facilitate accurate shift assignments.
Managers can also manually set and lock employee availability preferences in Planday to reflect agreements made outside the platform.

Using availability when scheduling on Planday web

When you create a shift, availability appears next to each employee in the form of a thumbs up or down. Here is how it works:

Employees set their availability in the Planday app or on the web.
Availability shows on the schedule:
- 🟢 Green thumbs up for available
- 🔴 Red thumbs down for unavailable
Managers use this info to assign shifts based on employee preferences.
Hover over the thumb icon to view any comments left by the employee.

Use this as a guide when assigning shifts. While it may not always be possible to meet everyone’s preference, having this data helps you make more informed choices.

Customise availability options via settings

If you need to change the default options, you can customise how employees set their availability in your Planday workspace to better match your scheduling needs.

Go to Planday web > Settings > Schedule > Swap and Availability > Availability

Here you can set the following options:

Limit viewing to X months in the future – (no longer supported) Previously used to limit how far ahead employees could set availability.
Available days
- Use calendar days - (default) Allows employees to set availability for any day of the year.
- Use business days from the schedule - (no longer supported) Previously limited availability to scheduled business days.
- Use CRM projects - (no longer supported)
Available options
- Can / cannot work - (default) Ask employees if they can or cannot work per day
- Intervals - Let employees pick from custom time blocks that you create (e.g. Day shifts, Evening shifts, Night shifts)
- Select start and end times - This option lets employees set exact times for when they can or cannot work.
  For example, if you want to know who’s available for weekend shifts but not sure for how long, you can use the Select start and end times. Employees will then be prompted to choose from which time period they can work when updating availability.
What tabs are visible, Commitment, Filter, Deviations – These old settings are no longer supported.

How employees see custom availability settings on Planday web

In this example, a manager has configured availability to gather specific preferences from employees, such as the period of the day. This is done by selecting "Intervals" from the "Available options" within the "Swap and Availability settings" page. Once configured, employees will be prompted to choose from these defined options when submitting their availability.

How employees register availability

The best way for employees to indicate their availability is via the Planday app. For a more detailed view, they can log in via a browser.

For instructions on setting your work availability, please refer to: How to set your work availability in Planday.

FAQs on availability

Can managers set availability on behalf of employees?

Yes but only from Planday web (not the app). Go to Planday web > Schedule > Availability > New availability and set the availability setting of an employee.
On the web availability can only be set for one employee per day, bulk updates are not supported for managers on web or app.
On the app, only personal availability wishes can be set by the employee.

Schedule based on employee availability