This guide has been created for all system users.
If you are unable to access anything covered in this guide, please raise this with a system administrator.
Overview
Working locations enables a wider view of which users will be present at company sites on a given day in a calendar view. This human logistics feature helps businesses better plan the who, and where within their workforce and it enables users to communicate their schedule companywide in a clear way.
By using location manager, users can better coordinate their time between business sites and working at home. This helps to empower user’s to better plan their schedule to allow for collaboration, quiet productive time, self-development time and more, no matter where they are.
Historically in the edays system, businesses created working from the home instance as an absence type, rather than a location. This can have an impact on entitlement, leave or the Bradford factor if not set up correctly and is an interruption to reporting and analysing staff absence trends. Utilising working locations to indicate where a user is working from enables companies to report and analyse location information along with any other business sites without impacting leave, absence, or entitlement.
Step-by-step Guide
Please note: For working from home to appear in the working locations drop-down, it must first be created by the administrator. Users – if you do not see working from home as a working location, please contact the system administrator. Administrators – to create working from home location, please see the knowledge base article on Creating Hybrid Working from Home Working Locations
To submit a working location, navigate to the ‘update working location’ button shown on the front-end platform in the top right corner, located to the left of the ‘book time off’ button.
When a user is booking their own working location, their name will automatically appear in the ‘For’ section. If an administrator or authoriser is booking on behalf of a user, they can select the user affected by clicking the pencil located on the right side of the ‘For’ box and using the search bar to locate them by typing in and selecting the user’s name. Next, select the working location from the drop-down.
From here, you will indicate if the working location is for a fixed date or if the working location will be recurring. In this instance, we are referring to Working from Home, which would require selecting Working from Home (or any iteration of how your company refers to hybrid working).
- To submit a fixed date working location, ensure that ‘Fixed date’ is highlighted in the working location booking screen, select the date, daypart (full day, am or pm) and input any details about the booking. Once you have completed this, click submit to add this to your calendar.
- To submit a recurring working location, ensure that ‘Recurring’ is highlighted in the working location booking screen, then first select the start date of the recurrence. After this is submitted, further details will appear. Next select the daypart (full day, am, pm), set the reoccurrence in the dropdowns of the ‘every’ section, highlight what day(s) of the week it repeats on and then set a date when the recurrence will end. Once details are entered, select Apply. You will be taken back to the working location booking screen, where a summary of the booking will appear. Once the information is correct, select submit to add it to your calendar.
Clicking the Working locations button at the top of the calendar will toggle the Working locations view, where the defaults and overrides become visible. The absence key has been updated to include working locations if the calendar is toggled to show working locations. All location records will display in the calendar (with absences taking priority), so it is possible for an override to display a tooltip when an absence covers that location.
There is no authorisation required for these bookings currently, and no emails are sent out to any parties for you.
Please note: a working locations submission cannot be edited once submitted. If an incorrect date or location is entered, the user, authoriser or administrator must go in and book another working from the home instance which corrects the information on the calendar. When a new working location is submitted it overrides the previous entry.
Example Configuration
Ignacy works for Ott & Grant, and he works from home every Tuesday & Thursday.
To submit this to the calendar, Ignacy would open the ‘Update Working Location’ form and select ‘Working From Home’ from the ‘Working Location’ dropdown. As this is a recurring working location, he selects recurring, which brings up the below screen. From here, he will input the start date, and indicate that it is a full day occurring every 1 week affecting Tuesday & Thursday. He will be reviewing his working locations in a few months, so he sets a date for this instance to end at a date in the future. Once he is happy with the rota he clicks ‘apply’
A final screen (example below) will appear with the details of the working location submission that have been previously entered. At this stage, any of the submissions can be edited if incorrect. Once Ignacy is happy that the information is accurate to the working location, he can select submit to apply this to the calendar.
Once Ignacy clicks submit his working location will be viewable on the calendar the ‘Working Locations’ calendar toggle is selected. The location of this button is just above the row of months. The calendar indicates with the dark colour blue in this instance, as it was pre-set in working locations, that Ignacy is working from home. If one of these tiles is hovered over, it will indicate he is working from home for those who are unable to interpret the colour coded calendar.
