Audience: CEO/Owner, Manager, Dispatcher
Read Time: 20 Minutes


This article will describe how to manage Employee Availability using the FASTTRAK Availability Calendar within the FASTTRAK Platform.

 

Companion Video - Employee Availability Calendar


The InVision Driver Schedule and Availability Calendar allows operators to  manage employee availability directly from the InVision software. Additionally, Drivers can be given access to the Calendar so they can update their availability on a monthly basis. Driver availability can also be enabled to send automated notification reminders based on operator configured settings.


The Driver Schedule and Availability Calendar is available to all customers. There is NOT an additional fee to use Availability Calendars.



TABLE OF CONTENTS


General Overview

The FASTTRAK availability modules will provide the ability to view driver availability across days and weeks within your operation. 


The basic availability workflow includes two primary concerns:

  • Entering Availability
  • Viewing Availability for a given day/week


Entering Availability


Drivers/Employees

The general workflow is to have the Employee themselves enter availability on an ongoing basis. They can use an option in the FASTTRAK Driver App to do this to they can login to InVision directly to do this. Once there, they will enter availability as single events or as part of a recurring schedule within that month.


The admin can control various actions by the employee including when a month is locked for edit; example, not to allow employees to edit schedule 3 days before the month starts.


In addition, an admin can configure automated schedule notification to remind the employee that their availability has not yet been entered. For example, send a notification every day, 3 days prior to the calendar lock period.


Calendar Admins

A calendar admin (has manage calendar permission) will have the option of entering the availability for each employee directly. If a user has the correct permissions, they will be able to administer all aspects of availability, including to add/modify the availability of any employee. In this case,  the admin is not governed by scheduling locks such as those that might impact employees directly.


Viewing Availability for a given day/week

Once the availability has been entered, it can be viewed from the calendar option within FASTTRAK InVision. The actions available to the user is dependent on user permissions for which there are two; Manage Operations Calendar and View Operations Calendar. 

InVision will show up to three different tabs on the calendar screen based on whether the logged in user is a scheduled employee or if they have one of the calendar permissions. More information on these screens is in a subsequent section.


Available Calendar Views

  • Employee Schedule
  • Daily Schedule
  • Weekly Schedule



How do I setup and manage employee availability?


Step 1:  Setup Scheduled and Availability settings including notifications, Driver App access, etc. from System Setup screen.


General setup of all non-security elements of availability are found in Global Settings. The InVision path to these settings is as follows:

System Setup -> Global Settings -> Employees Tab -> Driver Schedule and Availability Tab  


A description of some of the more advanced settings are as follows:


General Settings


Enable Employee Availability Schedules

This is the overall enabled/disable option. When this is disabled, all  availability options/features are hidden in the application; including calendar option/views, notifications, etc.


Schedule Period Length

Schedule periods can be customized to be any number of weeks. A scheduling period defines the time in which a schedule lock will take place. If you set a schedule period for 2 weeks, the entire period will lock when the lock period start (below).


Earliest Start Date

This setting controls the week in which the schedule period starts. It only needs to be set once and is most important if the schedule period is > 1 week.


Employee Types Requiring Scheduling: Selecting employee types in settings will ensure only those employees that need availability will receive notifications and have access to the availability calendar. The employee MUST be of one of the selected types (no types selected = all) in order to see the Calendar option.


NOTE: Individual employees can be DISBALED for calendar scheduling, including notifications, using an option in the employee profile. If they are disabled, they will NOT be able to enter availability and they will NOT receive notifications even if they are in one of the required schedule employee types.


Allow Drivers to update scheduled via Driver App: 

If enabled, drivers will see an option in the Driver App to update availability calendar. This option will auto-login the driver to InVision. Otherwise, drivers will have access ot the calendar in InVision directly according to security/role setup.


Allow employees to update their schedule X periods(s) in advance: 

Schedules are entered period to period but can be entered for anytime in the future (per settings). This setting limits how far in the future an employee can enter their availability.


Lock next period's schedule X days in advance: 

Schedules can be locked X days ahead of time to give operations time to account for the availability. Once locked, employees can no longer enter availability and the employees calendar can only be modified by a calendar admin.


Notification Settings


Show Driver Availability according to calendar/schedule when assign drivers: 

If enabled, the assign driver dropdown in Ultimate and InVision will show whether an employee has availability during the reservation timeline.


Enable Nightly Notifications for missing schedules X days in advance of the scheduled lock period: 

Enabling this notification will send an automated notification on a daily basis for X days prior to the configured lock period. Example: For a 30 day month, If the lock period if 3 days and this setting is 5, the employee will receive notifications on day 23, 24, 25, 26 and 27.


Send nightly reminder ONLY if employee has no availability entered for the period: 

The system has no way of knowing if the employee has entered ALL availability, only if they have entered ANY availability. Enabling this option will send to the employee only if they haven't entered any availability.


Notification (additional message):

Additional message to include when sending the schedule reminder.


Notification Email CC:

Email to copy for all schedule reminders to employees.



Step 2:  Configure your security roles to allow access to the calendar for drivers and/or employees you configured in step 1.


The calendar has three primary views:

  • Employee Calendar
  • Daily View
  • Weekly View.


In general, employees will only have access to the Employee Schedule view and will only be able to view/set their availability. Users with the correct permission will be able to see or manage all employee schedules and view schedules on a daily and weekly view.


There are four keys to determining which employees and or users have access to the calendar tabs. Three of these impact whether an Employee has the option. The last one impacts who can view/manage the calendar across all three tab views.


Employee Schedule Tab

  • Enable Employee Availability Schedules setting: Overall enable/disable setting (system wide)
  • Employee type
    • If no types selected, all employees are eligible for availability scheduling
    • Otherwise, only those employees of the selected types are eligible for availability scheduling
  • Employee schedule disabled option
    • By default, all employees have this setting enabled
    • If you want to disable a single employee incrementally, you can use this setting


Employees that meet the settings above will have access to the Employee Schedule Tab and receive configured notifications.


Daily and Weekly Schedule Views

  • Access control.


InVision users that are in an access role configured for calendar access will have the ability to view or manage (per permission)  individual employee calendars on the Employee Calendar tab AND access Daily and Weekly calendar tabs.


Within InVision, you will find role manage under the following path:

System Setup -> User and Role Management -> Manage Roles Button -> Role Edit Form



How is availability entered for Employees?

Once configured, employees will enter availability via the Driver App or directly within InVision if they have access. It is up to the operator to determine whether employees will enter their own scheduled or if they will be managed by an administrator.


The Employee Schedule tab will be loaded from the Driver app when that option is clicked. Otherwise, an admin or employee can open the calendar from the left menu.


Employee Dropdown

The employee dropdown is only enabled if the user has view or manage permission. Employees without view/manage permission will NOT have the ability to select and driver other than themselves.


Add Availability Button

Once loaded and if the day is not locked, the employee can add calendar events by clicking the Add Availability button.


Things to keep in mind:

  • A recurring icon (arrowed circle) designates that the event is part of a recurrence event. Edits to the event will ask to edit just this event or all accordingly.
  • Days that are locked are noted with a lock icon next to the day number



Adding or Editing an Event

When adding event, you will be required to enter the start time and end time. However, you can choose the All Day option in which you will only be asked for a given start date.


Within the Recurrence Detail section, you can setup recurrence by selecting the Specific Days option and checking one or more days of the week the event should recur on. Keep in mind, recurrence will ONLY populate events for the given month.


Recurrence is a very simple way to populate multiple events at one time. Additionally, it is recommended to add a full schedule first, then subtract days the employee cannot work. This will limit the number of events that must be added.




How do Managers view Employee Availability?


The calendar screen includes a Daily and Weekly view of all calendars within the selected month.


Things to keep in mind:

  • The views can be filtered using the filter options at the top of the screen.
  • You can browse to different dates by using the date control at the middle-top of the screen.
  • The calendar events are color coded by time of day for simpler review.
  • You can sort employees by clicking the Employees column
  • Employee level options are available via the three-dot menu:
    • Send reminder email: Send reminder to the employee for the currently selected period 
  • The Send Reminders button will generate reminders for the selected period for all employees that do NOT have availability entered.


Example of lockedExample of not locked

Daily Schedule View


Weekly Schedule View