When enabled, staff will be able to submit dates and times of day they are available to work via the uTRAC app.

From then, schedulers can then quickly find staff available for specific shifts via the Planner.

Enabling this feature will alter how the 'Find Available' and the Job Board filters work on the Planner page as they will now only show staff that have not yet been booked and have also positively confirmed that they are available to work a particular date & time.

Pro Tip: Companies can combine availability information and job board responses captured by staff to further streamline their booking process.

An extra option companies can add to the Availability filtering is the ability to warn managers if they attempt to assign a staff member who has not declared themselves as available to work during a specific time. Similar to assigning staff who have requested Leave, managers may ignore these warnings should they wish to proceed with booking the staff member.

When assigning staff to a shift, managers will now be warned if staff have submitted a leave request that clashes with that shift rather than only warning if staff have conflicting leave that has been approved.

Managers can decide to ignore that warning and continue with the booking, or choose to assign another staff member.

Previously, leave could only be applied to staff for full days. This new update will allow you to apply leave for partial days allowing for better flexibility.

Soon, staff with the latest app version will be able to also be able to submit times of day with their leave requests giving you more granular leave management.

We are also going to make managers more aware of submitted requests by warning them when attempting to assign staff with requested leave during a shift. Managers can opt to ignore the warnings and assign the staff or decide to assign someone else, utilizing the 'Find Available' filters on the Planner right-click menu and the Job Board option to only show staff not yet booked and without leave during a specific shift.

Please contact support@utraconline.com if you would like further information or demonstrations.