Add leave to an external online calendar
Displaying pending and approved leave applications on an external online calendar can assist with leave visibility within the business and can allow you to see who's away at a glance! This can easily be set up for any of the popular calendars that businesses use. Some common examples would be:
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- Outlook
- Apple Calendar
- Gmail
Some of the benefits of using an external online calendar:
- It is updated as often as your normal calendar program syncs, so you'll have visibility of new pending and approved applications made on the platform within your calendar program.
- You can choose whether or not to display the leave type (i.e. personal leave, compassionate leave) in your external calendar.
- The calendar token will respect search restrictions. If an admin user with search restrictions uses this feature, only the employees they have access to will display it on their calendar.
In this article, we will cover:
- Enabling this feature in your platform.
- Determine how you would like to use this feature in conjunction with search restrictions for the admins in your business.
- Setting up the calendar initially and removing access for admins who have left the role or business.
- FAQs about using the external online calendar leave feature.
Hot tip: In order to view and edit your leave applications in Time Off, you can easily switch to the calendar view.
To use this feature, it must first be enabled in your platform.
To do so, you'll need to access your Leave Settings:
- You can access settings for Leave Configuration from the Main Menu, navigate to Payroll Settings > Time & Attendance, then select Leave configuration from the side menu.
- Locate the setting 'Allow admin users to create public calendar links' and select Yes.
- To save your settings, select Save from the taskbar.
Before you set up the calendar there are a couple of important things to note and consider.
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- Which admins require access to leave in their external calendar
- Which employees each admin should view in their external calendar, or perhaps you may prefer to use a global calendar to see the leave for the entire business (suitable for smaller workforces)
- Whether or not you would like to show leave type in external calendars
The calendar links available from within foundU are unique to each admin user. This means that admin users can obtain this link and have visibility of the leave for every employee that they have access to normally in their search restrictions.
Hot tip: If you would like your entire business to have visibility over everyone's leave (global calendar), consider sharing a super admins link with all applicable admins, and using the 'Hide Leave type on calendars' to protect employee privacy of the leave type that they are using.
Setup different visibility options
There are 2 primary methods that can be used here:
- All admin users to see every employee's leave.
- This method might be best for small businesses where everyone needs visibility when other staff members are away.
- To do this, a super user in the platform can obtain the link for the calendar and distribute that same link to all people who need access to the calendar.
- Consider using 'Hide leave type' for privacy.
- Admin users to see only the leave applications of the employees they can view on the platform.
- This method suits best for larger businesses or in cases where managers only need to see their staff's leave applications.
- To do this, each manager should follow the below instructions to obtain their unique link. The employee's leave that will be visible in this case will be any employee that the admin can see in People > Approved People.
With the above setting enabled, admins with the correct permission will be able to create & obtain the link required to set up the calendar.
Setting up the external calendar for the first time
To extract the link for the initial calendar setup:
- Navigate to Time & attendance > Time Off.
- Click the Calendar button to the right of your screen. If you do not see this button, please refer to the section above 'Enabling the calendar link in your platform'.
- Choose whether or not you would like to 'Hide leave type on calendars' by enabling the toggle.
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With this toggle on- Your calendar will show employees on leave, but not the type. This protects an employee's privacy.
For example, this may be beneficial when employees are on compassionate leave. -
With this toggle off- All leave types will display against the employee's name in your external calendar.
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With this toggle on- Your calendar will show employees on leave, but not the type. This protects an employee's privacy.
- If you are setting up the calendar for the first time, simply select 'Copy Token' and close the box, and you will then proceed to your external calendar to continue.
Within your external online calendar program
With the link you just copied you can then set up your leave (pending and approved) to flow through to your external online calendar. As employees make updates, you will then see them in your calendar.
- Proceed to your chosen external calendar system and follow the instructions on Adding an external calendar token.
- Paste your link from foundU into the appropriate area.
- Please refer to the relevant help guide for the calendar system you're using for steps on how to finish the configuration.
- The steps for setting up leave in Google Calendar can be found here.
- The steps for setting up leave in an Outlook Calendar can be found here.
Below is an example of viewing pending and approved leave in a monthly view in Outlook.
- You can easily see where the leave begins and ends.
- You can see we have chosen to enable the 'View Leave type' (i.e. personal, annual etc.)
There will be occurrences when you will want to remove access for certain admins from the leave calendar.
By using Reset Token, you can remove access for any admin, but please note that this will reset the token for all admins who use it. Therefore a new, more current token should be created afterwards and provided to any admins who were using the prior token.
Examples of using the Reset Token
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An admin leaves your business.
- Reset the token to remove this admins access. Create a new token for any admins who need to continue to have visibility of these people.
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A manager may move to a new team and have different reports.
- Reset the token and create a new token with new search restrictions.
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You want Manager A to have higher visibility over more reports when Manager B goes on extended leave.
- Manager B should give their token to Manager A to have visibility over their reports. Consider using the 'Hide leave type on calendars' toggle for employee privacy.
Using the reset token to remove or change access for admins
To remove access to the external calendar
- Navigate to Time off and select the calendar button.
- Select the Reset token button.
- Before proceeding, confirm the reset.
Please note: By resetting this token, anyone using the current token will lose access to any leave on their calendar. You can always create a new one and provide it to those admins after revoking it.
Once a token has been revoked, the admin will experience no new incoming leave into their calendar, and after the calendar syncs up, all existing leave will be removed.
Hot tip: In the case of one manager needing oversight over another manager's reports, consider setting up a separate new calendar link instead of resetting the current token. This allows them to see separate leave calendars for different teams side-by-side.
What types of leave will be displayed on the calendar?
All leave types will come through to the external calendar, including unpaid leave types.
Any Pending and Approved leave applications will be visible on the calendar but declined leave will not be.
Can I display Availability on my external calendar as well?
Unfortunately, as availability is not a type of Leave it will not display on the external calendar. 2 options here would be:
- You can export employee Once -off Availability from Approved people > Filter > Availability > Export all Selected.
- On the roster, select all casual employees and then navigate to Display options > Pin Employees > Leave and unavailability. This will give you a weekly overview of any Once off or Ongoing employee that is pinned on your roster.
Why is pending leave displayed in the external calendar? I haven't approved this, so I am confused as to why it shows.
Ideally, by showing pending leave against other approved leave in the calendar, it will provide you with the visibility of how many people are on leave at this time and whether or not it is ideal to approve the pending ones as well.
I've added the calendar externally but nothing is showing. What do I do?
It can sometimes take a bit of time for the calendar to sync up initially. Once it has synced it will remain so and be updated live.
If the calendar does not sync within your initial setup (allow for 24 hours) please contact support for assistance.
If your calendar is not syncing often enough, please consult your calendar Sync/ refresh settings and consider changing the time span.
What happens to existing calendars if I create a new token?
The existing calendars will stop updating, meaning that no new leave requests or updates to existing leave requests will be visible on those calendars.
It's also worth pointing out that there's no notification to suggest that the calendar is no longer functioning.
In what case should I create a new token?
Most commonly, you would want to use this when you have provided your link to another admin user, and you would like to remove their access.
For instance, if a manager 'A' goes on extended leave for a few weeks and they would like another manager 'B' to have access to their employee's leave calendar. Once manager 'A' returns from leave, they would create a new external calendar link for themselves, which would in turn revoke access for manager 'B'.
How quickly does the external calendar update with changes?
The behaviour may be different depending on which external calendar you use, you should review how your external calendar program refreshes and syncs to see the frequency of updates.
Most systems should update pretty well instantly! Once you've got it set up, take note of when you next approve leave and when the calendar then updates with the changes.