What's covered in this help guide?
Leave vs Unavailability
Leave and unavailability refer to similar but distinct concepts.
Leave is used to request specific periods off work. For example, Annual Leave or Personal Leave. A leave request is required each time you apply for leave. To learn more about Leave in Tanda, please see Submitting Leave and Unavailability Requests.
Unavailability is used to nominate times when you are or are not available to work. Typically, this is relevant for casual or part-time staff who work different weekly hours. You can nominate the same repeating weekly unavailability times, or enter a temporary change to your availability.
Availability vs Unavailability
Availability in Tanda allows you to let your manager know when you are both unavailable and available to work. You can enter both unavailability and availability in the Availability tab, but you can only enter unavailability into the Unavailability tab, which is a request that must be approved.
Setting Availability using the mobile app
Continuous Availability
To set your ongoing availability, navigate to the Leave page, then select Availability > + Add Your Usual Availability.
From there, you can select the frequency (should it repeat weekly or fortnightly) and set whether you are Unavailable that day, Available for the full day, or Available for specific times in the day.
For example, if you are typically available all day Monday - Thursday, and unavailable after 12pm on Friday and on the weekend, you could configure the weekly schedule as below:
This can be edited at any time by navigating back to the Usual Availability page, making your changes before clicking Update.
You can also delete your ongoing availability here by scrolling down and clicking Delete. You cannot recover deleted ongoing availability.
Temporary Availability
If your availability is changing temporarily, such as for school holidays, you can configure this using the Temporary Change option.
From there, determine whether you are editing Availability or Unavailability.
Availability
When setting temporary availability, set the start/end dates of the period and edit the schedule like you normally would for your Usual Availability.
Note: Only days within the selected date range will be updated. If you edit Monday in the schedule, ensure that Monday is contained within the dates selected, otherwise, it will not apply the change.
Changes you make to your Temporary Availability will come up as such in the Upcoming Week overview:
You can also see any upcoming temporary changes by clicking Temporary Change:
Unavailability
Use the Temporary Unavailability option to send an unavailability request to your manager. This is similar to the existing, separate Unavailability modal that you might be used to:
Being marked as Unavailable using either the Availability feature or using an Unavailability request results in the same outcome.
Setting Availability using the web
Setting your Availability on the web is not currently possible, this is an app-only feature. However, you can still enter Unavailability requests on the web under Time & Attendance > Unavailability.
Managing Availability
Viewing and Approving Unavailability
When an employee submits an Unavailability request, and the 'Require approval for unavailability requests' setting has been ticked, managers will need to approve or decline the request in the Team Leave tab in the app:
Or under the Pending Unavailability tab on the web:
Managers will be notified of pending unavailability requests in the Daily Leave Updates emails.
Note: Employee Availability changes do not require approval from managers.
Unavailability in the roster
If an employee has been marked as unavailable, it will show in the roster when assigning employees to shifts (as long as the Unavailability Clash Roster Validation has been configured):
For more about setting up Roster Validations, please see our help article about Customising Roster Validations.
Blocking out periods of unavailability
As a manager, if you have periods when you'd prefer staff not to request unavailability, you can use the custom events roster feature. For example, you may need 'all hands on deck' for your busiest days, like a Grand Final. To configure this feature, navigate to Rosters > Events & Comments > + Add New Event.
From here, you will need to fill in the following fields:
Event Name: Name your event. This will be visible to staff.
Choose locations the event applies to: You can either specify certain locations you want the event to apply to or select 'all locations' for it to apply everywhere.
Choose specific teams the event applies to: You can specify certain teams you want the event to apply to or select 'all teams' for it to apply everywhere.
Dates: Select the dates for your event.
Discourage staff from taking unavailability: If ticked, staff will be warned that their request is unlikely to be approved, but will not be blocked from submitting one.
Prevent staff from taking unavailability requests: If ticked, staff will be unable to submit an unavailability request for the duration of your event. You can configure an exception for a maximum number of requests.