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Status: Request
Hi - A nice feature that would be helpful would be to assign a "manager" to each employee. This way when that employee requests time off that manager would get the notification. Also, if a manager goes on vacation he can assign a backup to approve anytime off that comes in. Thanks -Chris
Hi Chris,
Let me look into the details of this, and see what can be done. Thanks for the continued participation.
Ryan
Ryan,
Another topic we discussed that I am adding to see if others need it also...
We have some employees that do not have internet access/email. Currently, managers cannot add vacation requests for employees. It would be a HUGE help if I could add vacation requests for those employees. Currently, I have a stack of papers that I have to compare against the printed schedule to make sure I didn't schedule someone on a date they requested off. If I could add the request myself, then the scheduling tool would cover that issue.
I suggest giving managers access to enter vacation requests of employees. This is a major need...
Thanks!
Heath
Hi Heath -
Thanks for posting this in here as well 
I have made not of this, and I 100% agree. The current vacation system doesn't allow for management to have complete control, which is a downside. We're in the middle of transitioning the move to a new server, so we're busy with that, but once we've made the move I'll make sure that we get these updates out right away.
If you have any other suggestions for how we can improve on the vacation system we can group these updates together.
Thanks again!
Ryan
Thanks Ryan!
This one is a big need for me... So looking forward to the upgrade! I do my schedules on Tuesdays, so if you could have it done by then it would be great. lol
It would be nice if there was a way to add an explanation to a vacation request when you reject it so that the employee knows the reason why. Also, it would be nice if the vacation request could be broken into days for approval/rejection. Currently I have an employee who has asked for 3 days off. Two of them are OK, but the third is one she is going to have to work. I would like to either reject the entire request with comments to resubmit it for only the two days, or approve the 2 days she can have and reject the third.
Overall, management needs more control over the vacation request system, as noted before...
Thanks a bunch! Love this site!
Thanks for the message, I can see how this would be very useful, and I'll put it on the drawing board for when we are working on the vacation system next.
Ryan
From LiveChat:
Currently when a vacation is approved for a certain timeline, any shifts that the user is scheduled on will remain as they were.
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Should ShiftPlanning remove these shifts automatically?
Warn the user so that they know, and have the ability to remove/review them?
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Thanks, I Look forward to hearing your feedback.
Ryan
When someone requests for vacation, managers should see these requests on the homepage (dashboard) with a link. This way managers don't have to go to the vacation option and see who has sent a request every time. In addition to this there should be a text box next to or below "Approve / Reject" option. A manager may want to pass some message why the leave request has been rejected. A copy of this request should go to the email address as well. This way there is a backup and no requests are skipped.
Last edited by mpatil (May 21, 2010 - 10:35pm)
Hi Chris,
Let me look into the details of this, and see what can be done. Thanks for the continued participation.
Ryan
This is called as Hierarchy.
Great suggestions @Mpatil - There are tons of requests coming in for improvements on the vacation side:
Individual Approvers - http://www.shiftplanning.com/forums/vie … php?id=164
Rejection Reasons - http://www.shiftplanning.com/forums/vie … php?id=108
etc
We'll keep all these in mind, when we are working on this next.
Ryan
I think there should be a message before approving/rejecting the vacation whether there are any shifts the employee that is requesting the vacation is assigned to, and if so, how many and which ones. Then the employer can decide whether to only approve if the employee has to trade those shifts beforehand.
Afterwards I would say don't remove them, but make it a shift without an employee. Together with the first suggestion the employer must've made a decision about the remaining shifts, and if he decides to approve the vacation he must have a plan for the shifts that are left behind.
Hi Mark - Thanks for your detailed response.
I think your suggestion is the best way to go, as it will provide the correct communication, as well as not leave 'holes' in the schedule, that later will be hard to fill.
Ryan
Hi Ryan - I think if an employee is already scheduled, and request vacation (which is then approved), that the employee should be removed from the schedule. As a manager I want to see who is scheduled to actually come in that day. By keeping the employee on the schedule it would seem they are scheduled to work.
Another option might be to Put a (V) next to their name so you know they were scheduled for that shift but took a vacation day.
Also, it would be nice to be able to undo an approved vacation... I have run into this a few times already and had to rely on pen and paper to remind myself that the person was now available for a shift they had requested off... that is so 20th century!
Provide ability to remove approved vacation. This will help managers get the correct vacation data in reports and also can see the correct approved vacations on calendar.
Thanks
This will be included in the upcoming changes to the Vacation system that will give management more control over user vacations.
Thanks for the input.
Ryan
It would be great if management could manually input vacation for the staff as well.
I agree!!!
From Another topic:
Ability to book partial day vacations.
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I have merged all vacation threads to here, and want to provide a quick update that we are working on a number of these improvements right now. I will provide more info here.
Thanks for all the feedback
Ryan
I would like to see the ability to make a note when an employee marks that they are unavailable, during a portion of the day. It would make it much easier when going through the conflicts if one could see the conflict and also see the reason why the employee is unavailable (meetings, time off, etc). I would also like to see a feature added that would allow the scheduler or manager put in partial days off for employees. If those two features were added, my company could migrate to this program, but without those features, it just isn't going to work.
Hi @Racinepubliclibrary -
So if I understand correctly you would want a 'notes' section attached to the availability, so that there can be details alongside in the reports, conflicts,etc.
Everything you need is coming, and soon.
Hopefully you won't have found another solution in the meantime.
Ryan
Management can now add vacations for employees. We are working to deliver the other requested features asap.
Thanks
You guys rock. Thank you.
You are adding all these great features. Maybe at the end of a month you can send an email to everyone subscribed and just let them know about all the great you are adding.
Thank you,
Kyle
I've been asked to do a quick update on some of the new features we've just rolled out under Vacation Management within ShiftPlanning. We'll have a full update in our company blog after we finish implementing a few remaining features. (Potentially with a newsletter in the near future - Thanks for the suggestion Kyle)
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Adding vacation requests on behalf of employees
Mentioned briefly above, requests can now be submitted by management on behalf of employees. This works just like it always has, just now managers will see an employee drop down menu when adding a request.
Removing vacation requests
The vacation view within your schedule now has active hyperlinks on employee names. Clicking on an employee's name opens up a brief summary, which allows you the option to unapprove vacation requests that have already been approved. Note - When this action is confirmed the employee is notified of the unapproval.
Vacation request conflicts
To make the scheduling process more intuitive we've added to handy features that will help to reduce conflicts before they happen during the vacation process. The number of conflicts (shifts that this employee is scheduled on during the request) are shown when a request is submitted:
Click on the number shows the dates/times of the shifts, with the option to click on that entry, to view the shift itself:
*We recommend that you resolve any conflicts before clicking Approve so that you don't end up with any missing spots in your schedule that are later hard to track down. If any conflicts do remain when you click Approve you will be notified:
(hopefully you didn't try to click on that by accident 
)
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We're working hard to implement the other requested features:
- Notes on rejection/unapproval
- Approving partial requests
- Partial Day Vacations
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Thanks everyone for your input. I hope you enjoy these new features, and we'll continue to update here with new developments.
Paul
Hi Paul/Ryan - Just wondering if you will be enabling the feature that I suggested in the beginning of this chain. Our dept. has 3 team leaders and is responsible for about 10 employees each. It would be nice that when one of their employees requested vacation that the request would go to their respective team leader. Basically it would require the admin to assign a manager to each employee....maybe something like the quick assign could be used for this. -Chris
Hi Chris -
Thanks for the follow-up and further suggestion. We haven't forgotten about this issue. We're working right now on a few major release items. As soon as they are out of the way I will bump up priority on a number of these minor fixes/improvements.
Ryan
Hi - A nice feature that would be helpful would be to assign a "manager" to each employee. This way when that employee requests time off that manager would get the notification. Also, if a manager goes on vacation he can assign a backup to approve anytime off that comes in. Thanks -Chris
Update:
With the new permissions levels schedulers can now be setup to individual schedules rather than system wide like they were previously. This help to further narrow down management of tasks from the business level to the scheduler level.
Ryan
The feature that lets you unapprove already-scheduled vacations is helpful, but it would also be nice if you could modify vacations. For example, if an employee requested five days off, and that was approved and added to the calendar, I would like to be able to modify that to only four days, without having to unapprove the whole time period, and then create a new vacation request for only four days.
Not sure if someone's already suggested this and I've missed it, but currently when I do my schedule, it will allow me to schedule an employee for a day they're requested off and I don't know there's a conflict until I go to publish. I'd love it if there was some sort of 'block' on the day the employee has requested off so that I know in advance not to schedule them.
Currently I have to remember to check the vacation schedule every week or I find out when I'm ready to publish that there's a problem and then I have to go back and rearrange the entire schedule for that day.
Thanks!
Why is it that when the employees look at the schedule they are not given the rights to view the vacations that have already been approved? It would be really helpful for employees to know not to try to submit a vacation request for a period of time in which an employee from the same department is gone. This is one of the features that we thought would be available, and to find out that it can't be done will probably be a deal breaker. The suggestion from online chat support was to change all the employees to "supervisor" which will not work either.
Thanks,
Cindy
The entire vacation schedule for my staff is coming up blank. Not a single person is showing a vacation having been requested or approved (including myself). It was not doing this on Friday when I left work. HELP!!
Alissabigblue wrote:
The entire vacation schedule for my staff is coming up blank. Not a single person is showing a vacation having been requested or approved (including myself). It was not doing this on Friday when I left work. HELP!!
This issue has been resolved. Please do a hard refresh by pressing Ctrl + F5 for pick up the changes. We do apologize for the inconvenience and thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Alissabigblue wrote:
The entire vacation schedule for my staff is coming up blank. Not a single person is showing a vacation having been requested or approved (including myself). It was not doing this on Friday when I left work. HELP!!This issue has been resolved. Please do a hard refresh by pressing Ctrl + F5 for pick up the changes. We do apologize for the inconvenience and thanks for bringing this to our attention.
I am still having problems accessing the full vacation schedule. Employees with two or more consecutive days off are now showing on the schedule. Employees with single days off are not. I know off the top of my head I have an employee out tomorrow, but he is not appearing on the vacation schedule. Similarly to December 4 and 18. Please advise. Thanks, Alissa
Hi @Alissabigblue,
We just sent this to you:
Sent at 3:26pm on Nov 14, 2011
Thanks for your contact. We apologize for the inconvenience and the troubles it caused to you. The issue you were having with 'Vacation Calender' is fixed now. Please refresh - to pick up the change.
We appreciate your patience and thanks for bringing this to our attention.
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If you have any further queries please feel free to contact us back.
We also really need partial days for vacations, as we have staff around the world. So, a Tuesday in the EU is partially on Monday AND Tuesday in PST....and we have no way to grant vacation for them appropriately using the current setup.
From Client:
Hi,
I may have missed it, but I was wondering if we can add a feature to block certain dates from having people take vacations. We would need to block certain dates for certain staff, for all staff and be able to approve if someone asks for vacation during those blocked dates. Thanks you.
From Client:
Hi! Would love to be able to set the system to show unavailability or vacations in schedule overview on screen. At the moment it shows on print out, but not actually on screen in the schedule overview ....
I'm sure the ShiftPlanning team has heard this many times, but partial vacation scheduling would be excellent! We have a number of employees who take afternoons off and it'd be great if they could submit a vacation request.
Also the ability to see "vacation" or "unavailable" on the Schedule screen, not just on the print out. I work with 8 physician's and it'd be great for them to see how many of their co-workers are on vacation before they submit a vacation request
From Client:
Has the partial day change been added yet?
Any updates from ShiftPlanning as to if/when partial day vacation requests is happening?
From Client!
Does your software allow to block dates. Example: we have an event and would like to tell all in employees in advance so that no one requests off.
Thanks
I was curious if there was any update on having the vacation day(s) showing on the schedule. Thanks.
Hi @Mwise - We are planning a number of improvements to our HR platform right after we finish the roll-out that we're working on now (International + Time Clock). More updates to follow in the coming weeks.
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Hi @Rachelb - If you're referring to staff vacations, these can viewed by the vacation mode in the left panel:
If you're referring to showing National Holidays, and other events, this is coming in a future update.
From Client:
Is there a way to post block out periods for the business, i.e. the week of Thanksgiving and Christmas, to avoid staff members to request vacation days during the peak season?
Thanks
if we could set vacation allowances for each staff member and then have the vacation schedule show which and how many days they have scheduled and how many they have left for a specified period.......or better yet allow them to accrue vacation at a rate of x.xx days per month and consume them as they request but only up to the number they have accrued (at the point point in time of the actual vacation days (if that makes sense) )
This way each employee could see how many vacation days they are allowed and how many they have taken.
Is there a way to setup vacation requests so that staff can ask for partial days off? We do a morning shift and an afternoon shift, and oftentimes people are scheduled for doubles. If someone is going to be out in the morning but not the afternoon, it would be great to be able to note that so that it doesn't show up as an error.
Is there any chance of having the ability to show vacation accrual at different rates for different employees. Also when employees are on "vacation", currently they do not receive pay on the payroll module, this needs to be added for those with paid vacation time!
Some companies do not track vacation time, personal days or sick days separately but have a PTO or paid time off policy. Would it be possible to add the ability to rename Vacation to Paid Time Off or other customized name? There have been other suggestions to be able to select different types of paid time off from a list, which would be really helpful.
It would also be nice to be able to figure available paid time off according to the accrual of hours worked as has been suggested previously, along with half days available to be taken as paid time off or scheduled time off.
I may have missed it but in looking at vacation time reports there does not appear to be the ability to see exactly what days were taken as vacation, only a total number of days. To get the actual days I had to scroll back through the year's schedule. Can the ability to see the dates of vacations taken by employees be enabled as a report? If I missed how to do this could someone please point out where that report is.
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