Quickstart guide for admins
Welcome to absentify, the leave management system designed to make tracking employee time off easy and efficient!
This Quickstart guide for administrators will walk you through the various features absentify has to offer. By the end of this guide, you'll have a good understanding of how absentify works and how to use it to track staff leave. Keep reading to learn more!
Please note that this does not go through the registration and setup process. If you haven't already created an account and filled out your company specifics, we suggest you check out our Startup and implementation for admins before continuing.
In this article, you'll be able to learn about the following functions to get your started with our absence planner app!
Overview page
My calendar
Creating a request
Creating requests for employees
Managing requests for employees
Reporting and Insights
Editing your preferences
New features
From the Overview page, you'll have a clear layout of the upcoming weeks where you can see when and which type of leave employees are scheduled for.
Here you'll also be able to view the remaining yearly vacation allowance from all employee's deductibles in the blue bubbles next to their photos.
Flip though the selected time period to view previous or upcoming weeks by using the arrows in the top left corner.
Each leave of absence will be indicated by a symbol and certain fill color. To learn how to customize this, read our support page on Creating absence types.
To get quick look at the absence type, click on the leave request itself and a window will pop up displaying the following:
Leave type: which type of leave was requested and the date/time of the beginning and end of the absence
Status: which user is responsible for approving the leave and if it's been accepted, denied, or is pending
Taken from allowance: whether or not the leave was deducted from the vacation allowance and if so, how many days were deducted
Request created: the date and time that the request was submitted
As an admin you can cancel requests from all employees within your company by clicking the three stacked dots on the bottom left followed by Cancel request.
You'll be prompted to provide a reason for the cancellation before sending.
From the Overview page, you can search for any of your company's departments by using the Department search bar.
From the drop-down menu, you can select which department you want to view.
Some additional options include Absent today where absentify will automatically filter through employees who are not present today. To turn off the department filters by selecting All Departments.
As an admin, you can adjust the cross-department visibility settings to prevent users in different departments from viewing each other’s schedules. Learn how to set this up by visiting our article on Department visbility.
You may notice that the remaining default allowance for each user is displayed next to their profile photo on the overview page. This information is only visible to you as an admin and any assigned approvers. For more details on user visibility and permissions, please refer to our support article: User Visibility and Permission Settings Explained
Click on My calendar to see an overview of the whole year, including:
Year: This section shows you all the stats about your deductible leave.
Your allowance: The amount of paid vacation days you receive for the displayed year
Carried over: The amount of vacation days have rolled over from last year
Days remaining: The amount of days you're allowed to book for the displayed year
You may notice a second allowance section showing you the same stats outlined above. This will apply if your company offers you multiple allowance types per fiscal year.
Non-deductible leave: This section shows you all the stats about your non-deductible leave. These leave types have an unlimited allowance quota, but some may require approval.
Your public holidays will show up in your calendar according to your set language preferences. Click here for more information on how to update your language.
To view the previous or upcoming fiscal years, you can easily flip through by clicking on the arrows at the top left hand side.
From both My calendar or Overview, you can create a request by either clicking Create request, a specific day, or a series of days. This will automatically open a window to book time off.
When booking time off, you'll have to specify the following:
Leave type: select the type of leave from the drop-down menu
Starting: specify when the leave will begin
Ending: specify when the leave will end
Reason: explain why you are requesting time off (optional)
If you are requesting to book off vacation time or another type of deductible leave, you'll also be notified how many days will be deducted from your overall vacation allowance before you send the request.
This is determined by the settings you've put into place when creating the request. By going to Settings > Leave types > Add new leave type, you'll notice there's a toggle switch when creating a new request to give you the option to specify whether or not the leave should be deducted from the yearly quota or not.
For more info on the different option available when creating a request, read our article Creating absence requests.
Once you've sent your request, you'll be able to see it logged in a faded color, which means it has not been approved yet. In the photo below, the request for vacation (yellow) hasn't been approved yet, but the request for a sick day (red) has.
Other users' requests will go through the normal approval process from their designated department manager/approver. However, as an admin you'll have the option to approve or deny any leave request (including your own) whether it is to take place in the future or up to once fiscal year in the past.
Approvers can approve or deny leave requests but their own leave request must be approved by a higher-ranking manager or business manager.
This can easily be editing by navigating to Settings > Users > Edit > Approver or you can read our helpdesk guide, Selecting a user's approver, to learn more.
As an admin, you can create requests for any member of staff on their behalf.
You can create requests for employees by following the same steps you would for yourself, but instead selecting the employee's name from the roster.
To approve or deny time off requests from employees, either click on the request from the Overview page, or the bell in the top right hand corner view open requests.
If there are pending requests, you'll have the option to either approve or decline them.
If you decide to approve the request, it will disappear from the open requests page and show up in the user's calendar, but if you wish to deny a request, you'll be prompted to give a reason before clicking OK.
The request will then be deleted from both the open requests page as well as the user's calendar.
If you've forgotten to approve or deny a request, users have the option to send their approver a friendly reminder via E-mail 24 hours (and if necessary, 48 hours) after the request was created. If you are assigned as approver to any users, you may receive these reminders via E-Mail.
This feature ensures that the approvers are promptly notified of pending requests, avoiding any delays in the approval process.
Reason for Absence Visibility: As an admin, you can restrict the visibility of absence reasons for specific users. To learn how to configure this, please visit our support guide here.
From the Insights page, you can gain valuable stats into leave patterns and trends, budget allocations, and employee burnout. absentify simplifies making informed decisions that optimize your team's productivity and overall well-being!
Here, you can view an overall outline from the employees within your department. This includes:
Booked: this is the total number of absence days booked for the year
Remaining: this the total number of contingent days that are left over after subtracting the booked days
Total allowance: this is the total of both Booked and Remaining days
Number of employees: the number of employees within the company
On the left side you can view which employees are a part of the department you've selected and who has a birthday coming up.
You'll also have the option to switch between viewing the insights only for certain departments, or to view all departments by making a selection from the drop-down menu.
The Annual Trend chart will show you which leave types are booked for each month of the current year.
You can easily filter out some leave types by clicking on them.
The Burnout Board is a useful tool because it shows you which employee urgently needs time off. This is calculated by factoring when was the last time the employee took a break and how long until they have an upcoming approved leave booked.
As soon as these employees are given time off, they'll automatically be removed from the Burnout Board.
This is a useful feature because it'll help you save time when assessing which employees should get priority when booking time off!
In the top right hand corner you can access your preferences by clicking on your profile photo and selecting Your Preferences from the drop-down menu.
Under General, you can change to following:
Language: Select your preferred language from the drop-down menu.
Time zone: Select the time zone where you are located. This ensures that your leave requests align with the working hours where you live.
Date format: Specify your preferred display date.
Time format: Decide between a 12 or a 24-hour clock.
Week start: Select which day you'd prefer to have shown as your week start.
Calendar weeks: Activate this toggle to display the calendar weeks from the My Calendar page.
absentify will automatically send your desired out-of-office reply from Outlook during the time of your absence and once you’re back in the office, this feature will be turned off.
To learn more about how to set up this feature, visit our Quickguide for creating out of office replies. Note that if your admin has deactivated customization by the user, this will not be visible.
Under Notification Settings, you'll have the option to set your Outlook or Teams notifications for various updates including:
Calendar notifications: Activate this toggle to receive notifications to add events to your calendar. By keeping this toggle deactivated, your leave booked absentify will automatically be carried over to your Outlook calendar.
Please note that for some users the toggle for Calendar invitations might not be displayed, depending on how your company has set up this feature.
Absence request notifications: Allow absentify to send you notifications via E-mail or Teams by selecting an option from the drop-down menu.
absentify updates: Activate this toggle to receive updates on the latest features an improvements - including useful how-to's! We are constantly looking to improve the app and would love to hear your Feedback on our Roadmap. Your recommendation could be the next feature you see pop up on your updates notifications!
Birthday and anniversary reminders: Never forget to wish your colleagues happy birthday again by activating this toggle.
Weekly absence summary: Receive a weekly absence summary of all your upcoming absences.
In the upper right hand corner you'll see a present icon, which will open up a sidebar where you can see all of the most recent updates from absentify.
As an absentify user, you can like or comment on announcements and become a part of the absentify network!
You can also view current ideas or upcoming planned features. Visit our Roadmap to post your own ideas on how absentify could improve the user experience as well as see and comment on other absentify user's recommendations - we'd love to hear your feedback!
For further assistance, feel free to contact absentify support. We're here to help you make the most out of absentify!
Add users
Set business hours
Set public holidays
Select a user's approver
This Quickstart guide for administrators will walk you through the various features absentify has to offer. By the end of this guide, you'll have a good understanding of how absentify works and how to use it to track staff leave. Keep reading to learn more!
Please note that this does not go through the registration and setup process. If you haven't already created an account and filled out your company specifics, we suggest you check out our Startup and implementation for admins before continuing.
In this article, you'll be able to learn about the following functions to get your started with our absence planner app!
Jump to:
Overview page
My calendar
Creating a request
Creating requests for employees
Managing requests for employees
Reporting and Insights
Editing your preferences
New features
Overview
From the Overview page, you'll have a clear layout of the upcoming weeks where you can see when and which type of leave employees are scheduled for.
Here you'll also be able to view the remaining yearly vacation allowance from all employee's deductibles in the blue bubbles next to their photos.
Flip though the selected time period to view previous or upcoming weeks by using the arrows in the top left corner.
Each leave of absence will be indicated by a symbol and certain fill color. To learn how to customize this, read our support page on Creating absence types.
To get quick look at the absence type, click on the leave request itself and a window will pop up displaying the following:
Leave type: which type of leave was requested and the date/time of the beginning and end of the absence
Status: which user is responsible for approving the leave and if it's been accepted, denied, or is pending
Taken from allowance: whether or not the leave was deducted from the vacation allowance and if so, how many days were deducted
Request created: the date and time that the request was submitted
As an admin you can cancel requests from all employees within your company by clicking the three stacked dots on the bottom left followed by Cancel request.
You'll be prompted to provide a reason for the cancellation before sending.
Departments
From the Overview page, you can search for any of your company's departments by using the Department search bar.
From the drop-down menu, you can select which department you want to view.
Some additional options include Absent today where absentify will automatically filter through employees who are not present today. To turn off the department filters by selecting All Departments.
As an admin, you can adjust the cross-department visibility settings to prevent users in different departments from viewing each other’s schedules. Learn how to set this up by visiting our article on Department visbility.
Overview page: Allowance visibility
You may notice that the remaining default allowance for each user is displayed next to their profile photo on the overview page. This information is only visible to you as an admin and any assigned approvers. For more details on user visibility and permissions, please refer to our support article: User Visibility and Permission Settings Explained
My calendar
Click on My calendar to see an overview of the whole year, including:
Year: This section shows you all the stats about your deductible leave.
Your allowance: The amount of paid vacation days you receive for the displayed year
Carried over: The amount of vacation days have rolled over from last year
Days remaining: The amount of days you're allowed to book for the displayed year
You may notice a second allowance section showing you the same stats outlined above. This will apply if your company offers you multiple allowance types per fiscal year.
Non-deductible leave: This section shows you all the stats about your non-deductible leave. These leave types have an unlimited allowance quota, but some may require approval.
Your public holidays will show up in your calendar according to your set language preferences. Click here for more information on how to update your language.
To view the previous or upcoming fiscal years, you can easily flip through by clicking on the arrows at the top left hand side.
Create a request
From both My calendar or Overview, you can create a request by either clicking Create request, a specific day, or a series of days. This will automatically open a window to book time off.
When booking time off, you'll have to specify the following:
Leave type: select the type of leave from the drop-down menu
Starting: specify when the leave will begin
Ending: specify when the leave will end
Reason: explain why you are requesting time off (optional)
Hint:
If you are requesting to book off vacation time or another type of deductible leave, you'll also be notified how many days will be deducted from your overall vacation allowance before you send the request.
This is determined by the settings you've put into place when creating the request. By going to Settings > Leave types > Add new leave type, you'll notice there's a toggle switch when creating a new request to give you the option to specify whether or not the leave should be deducted from the yearly quota or not.
For more info on the different option available when creating a request, read our article Creating absence requests.
Once you've sent your request, you'll be able to see it logged in a faded color, which means it has not been approved yet. In the photo below, the request for vacation (yellow) hasn't been approved yet, but the request for a sick day (red) has.
Other users' requests will go through the normal approval process from their designated department manager/approver. However, as an admin you'll have the option to approve or deny any leave request (including your own) whether it is to take place in the future or up to once fiscal year in the past.
Approvers can approve or deny leave requests but their own leave request must be approved by a higher-ranking manager or business manager.
This can easily be editing by navigating to Settings > Users > Edit > Approver or you can read our helpdesk guide, Selecting a user's approver, to learn more.
Creating requests for employees
As an admin, you can create requests for any member of staff on their behalf.
You can create requests for employees by following the same steps you would for yourself, but instead selecting the employee's name from the roster.
Managing requests
To approve or deny time off requests from employees, either click on the request from the Overview page, or the bell in the top right hand corner view open requests.
If there are pending requests, you'll have the option to either approve or decline them.
If you decide to approve the request, it will disappear from the open requests page and show up in the user's calendar, but if you wish to deny a request, you'll be prompted to give a reason before clicking OK.
The request will then be deleted from both the open requests page as well as the user's calendar.
Reminder E-Mails
If you've forgotten to approve or deny a request, users have the option to send their approver a friendly reminder via E-mail 24 hours (and if necessary, 48 hours) after the request was created. If you are assigned as approver to any users, you may receive these reminders via E-Mail.
This feature ensures that the approvers are promptly notified of pending requests, avoiding any delays in the approval process.
Reason for Absence Visibility: As an admin, you can restrict the visibility of absence reasons for specific users. To learn how to configure this, please visit our support guide here.
Enhanced Reporting and Insights
From the Insights page, you can gain valuable stats into leave patterns and trends, budget allocations, and employee burnout. absentify simplifies making informed decisions that optimize your team's productivity and overall well-being!
Here, you can view an overall outline from the employees within your department. This includes:
Booked: this is the total number of absence days booked for the year
Remaining: this the total number of contingent days that are left over after subtracting the booked days
Total allowance: this is the total of both Booked and Remaining days
Number of employees: the number of employees within the company
On the left side you can view which employees are a part of the department you've selected and who has a birthday coming up.
You'll also have the option to switch between viewing the insights only for certain departments, or to view all departments by making a selection from the drop-down menu.
Annual Trend
The Annual Trend chart will show you which leave types are booked for each month of the current year.
You can easily filter out some leave types by clicking on them.
Burnout Board
The Burnout Board is a useful tool because it shows you which employee urgently needs time off. This is calculated by factoring when was the last time the employee took a break and how long until they have an upcoming approved leave booked.
As soon as these employees are given time off, they'll automatically be removed from the Burnout Board.
This is a useful feature because it'll help you save time when assessing which employees should get priority when booking time off!
Your Preferences
In the top right hand corner you can access your preferences by clicking on your profile photo and selecting Your Preferences from the drop-down menu.
General
Under General, you can change to following:
Language: Select your preferred language from the drop-down menu.
Time zone: Select the time zone where you are located. This ensures that your leave requests align with the working hours where you live.
Date format: Specify your preferred display date.
Time format: Decide between a 12 or a 24-hour clock.
Week start: Select which day you'd prefer to have shown as your week start.
Calendar weeks: Activate this toggle to display the calendar weeks from the My Calendar page.
Automatic replies
absentify will automatically send your desired out-of-office reply from Outlook during the time of your absence and once you’re back in the office, this feature will be turned off.
To learn more about how to set up this feature, visit our Quickguide for creating out of office replies. Note that if your admin has deactivated customization by the user, this will not be visible.
Notification Settings
Under Notification Settings, you'll have the option to set your Outlook or Teams notifications for various updates including:
Calendar notifications: Activate this toggle to receive notifications to add events to your calendar. By keeping this toggle deactivated, your leave booked absentify will automatically be carried over to your Outlook calendar.
Please note that for some users the toggle for Calendar invitations might not be displayed, depending on how your company has set up this feature.
Absence request notifications: Allow absentify to send you notifications via E-mail or Teams by selecting an option from the drop-down menu.
absentify updates: Activate this toggle to receive updates on the latest features an improvements - including useful how-to's! We are constantly looking to improve the app and would love to hear your Feedback on our Roadmap. Your recommendation could be the next feature you see pop up on your updates notifications!
Birthday and anniversary reminders: Never forget to wish your colleagues happy birthday again by activating this toggle.
Weekly absence summary: Receive a weekly absence summary of all your upcoming absences.
Announcements and Ideas
In the upper right hand corner you'll see a present icon, which will open up a sidebar where you can see all of the most recent updates from absentify.
As an absentify user, you can like or comment on announcements and become a part of the absentify network!
You can also view current ideas or upcoming planned features. Visit our Roadmap to post your own ideas on how absentify could improve the user experience as well as see and comment on other absentify user's recommendations - we'd love to hear your feedback!
Need help?
For further assistance, feel free to contact absentify support. We're here to help you make the most out of absentify!
Related articles:
Add users
Set business hours
Set public holidays
Select a user's approver
Updated on: 01/10/2024
Thank you!