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 and how to customize them to your company's needs. 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!
If you haven't already created an account and filled out your company specifics, we suggest you check out our Startup guide for more information on setting up your account before continuing.
Once you've registered your company, you can either continue to use absentify from your search engine, or access it through the Teams app.
It's easy to install the absentify app on your Microsoft Teams account! Simply go to "Microsoft Teams" > "Apps" > search for "absentify" > click "Add". It will be installed automatically so you can start using absentify from your teams account.
If you are not already logged into your microsoft account, you will be prompted to do so. After which, you will be automatically redirected to the absentify dashboard.
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 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, select "All Departments".
In "My calendar" you will see an overview of the whole year. The following will be displayed:
Year: This section shows you all the data for your deductible leave.
Allowance: how many paid vacation days you receive for the selected year
Carried over: how many vacation days have rolled over from previous year
Vacation: how many vacation days you've logged for the selected year
Days remaining: how many days you're still allowed to book for the selected year
Non-deductible leave: This section shows you all the data for the non-deductible leave you've logged.
Public holidays: how many public holidays there are in the selected calendar year (these days will be displayed shaded in grey)
Absences: how many days of each specific absence you've taken for the selected year
Public holidays can easily be added to your company's calendar by navigating to "Settings" > "Public holidays" > "Add public holidays" or by reading or quickguide, Public Holidays.
If you'd like to view the previous or following years, you can easily flip through by clicking on either the left or right arrows on the top left hand side.
You can also view the calendar of any other user by selecting them from the Overview page. You'll be able to see further stats about their vacation deductible and time off such as in the photo below.
This feature is available for admins, but is limited to all other users, depending on their position (i.e. manager, approver, or a normal user). For more information on what's visible to which user, read our helpdesk article Permissions per user to learn more.
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, you'll also be notified how many days will be deducted from your overall vacation allowance before you send the request.
However, unlike the example above, the user in the example below has selected the vacation leave that isn't to be deducted from the yearly quota.
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.
As an admin you'll have the option to approve all of your own requests but other users' requests will need approval from their department manager/approver. 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, simply click the bell in the top right hand corner.
If there are pending requests, you'll have the option to either accept or deny 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 you can click "OK".
The request will then be deleted from both the open requests page as well as the user's calendar.
From the Insights page, 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. For example, in the photo below, "Sick day" and "Unpaid Leave" have been filtered out.
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 personal icon and selecting "Your Preferences" from the drop-down menu.
Under "General", you'll have the option to change to following:
Language: select your preferred language from the drop-down menu
Time zone: select your time zone from the drop-down menu
Date format: specify how you'd like the date to be shown
Time format: specify whether you'd like a 12 or a 24-hour clock
Week start: select which day you'd prefer to have shown as the start of the week
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. This is just another benefit of absentify being integrated within the Microsoft environment!
If the "Automatic replies" option isn't shown under your preferences, you'll need to enable the Outlook out of the office reply feature. Please contact your administrator to do so.
As soon as you see the "Automatic replies" option, you're ready to set up this feature!
Select the type of leave for which you'd like absentify to automatically send a reply whenever this leave shows up in your calendar. You can customize your out-of-office reply for each individual leave.
Flip the toggle to view the templates provided.
You’ll also have the option to use placeholders so that your message will look just the way you want it.
Once you've selected the template for the leave type, you'll see two template options:
Inside organization template: This message will be sent to your internal contacts.
Outside organization template: This message will be sent to your external contacts.
If you decide you’d like absentify to send automatic out-of-office replies to external contacts, check the box for “Send replies outside your organisation”. Otherwise, check the box for "Send replies only to contacts".
By using the variables, absentify automatically sends the same out-of-office reply every time you're scheduled to be away.
To edit a template, simply edit the text in the text editor. Within your text, you can decide where the placeholders should sit in your out-of-office message. There are 6 available:
Start date: the day your leave starts
Start time: the time of day your leave starts
Date of return: the day you'll return from your leave (we will automatically calculate this date for you, based on your schedule, holidays, and other absences)
Time of return: the time of day you'll return from your leave
Manager name: the name of your manager
Manager email: the email address of your manager
If you decide to enter the "End date" manually, your automatic replies will be turned off as of that day and you’ll have to specify the time period again the next time you’re out of the office.
Whereas if you use the placeholders, absentify will edit this automatically for you whenever you take a leave of absence of the selected type.
After editing your templates, click "Send test email" to send a test email to yourself and make sure everything looks the way you want it to.
Once you're happy with your template, click "Save".
From here, you can save a different template for each type of leave by selecting a new "Leave type template" from the top of the page.
If the automatic out of office reply can't be set for some reason, you'll get an email with the text that you can copy and paste manually into Outlook. To do this, copy the text from the email and go to "Settings" > "Mail" > "Automatic Replies" in Outlook. Paste the text in the text box and click "Save".
Under "Email notifications", you'll have the option to allow absentify to send you Email notifications by flipping the toggle and clicking "Save".
Please note that for some users the toggle may not be shown for "Calendar invitations", depending on how you've set up the Microsoft integrations under "Settings" > "Microsoft". To allow your users this option, you'll need to flip the toggle switch off next to Outlook calendar synchronization.
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!
The present icon can also bring you to our "Ideas" page where you can post your own ideas on how absentify could improve the user experience as well as see and comment on what other people have posted as recommendations. To upvote or downvote any of the ideas posted, visit our Roadmap.
This concludes the Quickstart guide for administrators. You should now have a good understanding of how absentify works and can start tracking your staff's leave!
For more information, please refer to our other guides in the Help center.
This Quickstart guide for administrators will walk you through the various features absentify has to offer and how to customize them to your company's needs. 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!
Hint:
If you haven't already created an account and filled out your company specifics, we suggest you check out our Startup guide for more information on setting up your account before continuing.
Sign in
Once you've registered your company, you can either continue to use absentify from your search engine, or access it through the Teams app.
Download absentify on the Teams app
It's easy to install the absentify app on your Microsoft Teams account! Simply go to "Microsoft Teams" > "Apps" > search for "absentify" > click "Add". It will be installed automatically so you can start using absentify from your teams account.
If you are not already logged into your microsoft account, you will be prompted to do so. After which, you will be automatically redirected to the absentify dashboard.
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 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, select "All Departments".
My calendar
In "My calendar" you will see an overview of the whole year. The following will be displayed:
Year: This section shows you all the data for your deductible leave.
Allowance: how many paid vacation days you receive for the selected year
Carried over: how many vacation days have rolled over from previous year
Vacation: how many vacation days you've logged for the selected year
Days remaining: how many days you're still allowed to book for the selected year
Non-deductible leave: This section shows you all the data for the non-deductible leave you've logged.
Public holidays: how many public holidays there are in the selected calendar year (these days will be displayed shaded in grey)
Absences: how many days of each specific absence you've taken for the selected year
Hint:
Public holidays can easily be added to your company's calendar by navigating to "Settings" > "Public holidays" > "Add public holidays" or by reading or quickguide, Public Holidays.
If you'd like to view the previous or following years, you can easily flip through by clicking on either the left or right arrows on the top left hand side.
Viewing employee calendars
You can also view the calendar of any other user by selecting them from the Overview page. You'll be able to see further stats about their vacation deductible and time off such as in the photo below.
Hint:
This feature is available for admins, but is limited to all other users, depending on their position (i.e. manager, approver, or a normal user). For more information on what's visible to which user, read our helpdesk article Permissions per user to learn more.
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, you'll also be notified how many days will be deducted from your overall vacation allowance before you send the request.
However, unlike the example above, the user in the example below has selected the vacation leave that isn't to be deducted from the yearly quota.
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.
As an admin you'll have the option to approve all of your own requests but other users' requests will need approval from their department manager/approver. 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, simply click the bell in the top right hand corner.
If there are pending requests, you'll have the option to either accept or deny 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 you can click "OK".
The request will then be deleted from both the open requests page as well as the user's calendar.
Insights
From the Insights page, 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. For example, in the photo below, "Sick day" and "Unpaid Leave" have been filtered out.
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 personal icon and selecting "Your Preferences" from the drop-down menu.
General
Under "General", you'll have the option to change to following:
Language: select your preferred language from the drop-down menu
Time zone: select your time zone from the drop-down menu
Date format: specify how you'd like the date to be shown
Time format: specify whether you'd like a 12 or a 24-hour clock
Week start: select which day you'd prefer to have shown as the start of the week
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. This is just another benefit of absentify being integrated within the Microsoft environment!
If the "Automatic replies" option isn't shown under your preferences, you'll need to enable the Outlook out of the office reply feature. Please contact your administrator to do so.
As soon as you see the "Automatic replies" option, you're ready to set up this feature!
Select the type of leave for which you'd like absentify to automatically send a reply whenever this leave shows up in your calendar. You can customize your out-of-office reply for each individual leave.
Flip the toggle to view the templates provided.
You’ll also have the option to use placeholders so that your message will look just the way you want it.
Once you've selected the template for the leave type, you'll see two template options:
Inside organization template: This message will be sent to your internal contacts.
Outside organization template: This message will be sent to your external contacts.
If you decide you’d like absentify to send automatic out-of-office replies to external contacts, check the box for “Send replies outside your organisation”. Otherwise, check the box for "Send replies only to contacts".
By using the variables, absentify automatically sends the same out-of-office reply every time you're scheduled to be away.
To edit a template, simply edit the text in the text editor. Within your text, you can decide where the placeholders should sit in your out-of-office message. There are 6 available:
Start date: the day your leave starts
Start time: the time of day your leave starts
Date of return: the day you'll return from your leave (we will automatically calculate this date for you, based on your schedule, holidays, and other absences)
Time of return: the time of day you'll return from your leave
Manager name: the name of your manager
Manager email: the email address of your manager
If you decide to enter the "End date" manually, your automatic replies will be turned off as of that day and you’ll have to specify the time period again the next time you’re out of the office.
Whereas if you use the placeholders, absentify will edit this automatically for you whenever you take a leave of absence of the selected type.
After editing your templates, click "Send test email" to send a test email to yourself and make sure everything looks the way you want it to.
Once you're happy with your template, click "Save".
From here, you can save a different template for each type of leave by selecting a new "Leave type template" from the top of the page.
If the automatic out of office reply can't be set for some reason, you'll get an email with the text that you can copy and paste manually into Outlook. To do this, copy the text from the email and go to "Settings" > "Mail" > "Automatic Replies" in Outlook. Paste the text in the text box and click "Save".
Email notifications
Under "Email notifications", you'll have the option to allow absentify to send you Email notifications by flipping the toggle and clicking "Save".
Please note that for some users the toggle may not be shown for "Calendar invitations", depending on how you've set up the Microsoft integrations under "Settings" > "Microsoft". To allow your users this option, you'll need to flip the toggle switch off next to Outlook calendar synchronization.
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!
The present icon can also bring you to our "Ideas" page where you can post your own ideas on how absentify could improve the user experience as well as see and comment on what other people have posted as recommendations. To upvote or downvote any of the ideas posted, visit our Roadmap.
This concludes the Quickstart guide for administrators. You should now have a good understanding of how absentify works and can start tracking your staff's leave!
For more information, please refer to our other guides in the Help center.
Updated on: 16/05/2023
Thank you!