Availability Scheduling

Overview

Show your availability as background events in your calendar, blocking out time around operating hours, vacations, or downtime.

DayBack calendars each have a setting called "Show As Unavailable." When this setting is enabled, calendars will display as background blocks that can't be clicked or dragged; this background color indicates that the assigned resource is unavailable during that block. 

The examples below show DayBack using the "Resource Absence" object that comes with Salesforce's Lightning Scheduler, but the feature is available in any calendar. So you can create a custom object to block off availability;  or mix sources, scheduling your appointments in Salesforce, for example, and maintaining your availability in Google Calendar (where repeating events make this easier), or in Google Sheets. 

Rules and Exceptions

Availability is often a combination of rules and exceptions. Rules are things like "Jim is available every Wendesday and Thursday from 2pm to 5pm through June 31st." And exceptions are things like "Jim has a Dr's appointment next Thursday from 3pm to 4pm."

DayBack can be customized to render your rules as availability so that you don't have to make hundreds of repeating events to depict your schedule. The rules are generally stored in new tables in Salesforce and each rule has a date range. DayBack queries Salesforce for these rules and then explodes them onto the calendar as if there were discrete events. Rules are often created by an admin in native Salesforce pages, while exceptions are often entered into DayBack by the resources themselves and the "approved" by an admin before the effect availability.

If you're interested in adding rule-based availability to DayBack, please get in touch so we can discuss adding an implementation package to your deployment.

Designating a Calendar as Your Unavailable Times

Just one setting at the bottom of the Calendar Info tab toggles "Show As Unavailable" on and off. Set this to "Yes" to make the source uneditable and render these events as "background" events in the calendar. Set it to "No" if you want to edit these records in DayBack.

DayBack supports displaying unavailable calendars in resource view, and events on the unavailable calendar must be assigned a resource to display in that resource's column or row.

Turning Off Unavailable For Quick Editing

Resource Absence records and other data sources can be created outside of DayBack. However, by disabling the "Show as Unavailable" setting, you can edit and make new records in DayBack's interface which may be faster, since it can take advantage of DayBack's quick editing, especially using DayBack's Duplicating Events feature. Select a data source like Google Calendar or FileMaker that supports repeating events for the fastest setup possible.

You'll see this demonstrated in the movie at the top of this page.

Share Private Google Calendars as Unavailable Times

You can share your private Google Calendar events with others while displaying them as unavailable times. To share your private availability calendar, you'll need to adjust the sharing settings directly in the Google Calendar app. Select the individual(s) you wish to share your calendar with and then set the sharing permission to "See only free/busy (hide details)". This will allow others to see when you're busy without revealing event details. However, you can still view and edit your own events in DayBack.

Please note that shares are not automatically reflected in DayBack’s calendar list once you’ve started sharing your private calendars. Once shared, each individual will receive an email invitation to subscribe to the new share. After accepting the invitation, they need to refresh their browser in DayBack to view events from the newly shared calendar.

Color Coding Unavailable Time

DayBack's Unavailable Calendars honor Event Colors & Status. In this case, The unavailable Status field has been mapped to the Resource Absence Type field and a folder with corresponding types have been set up in DayBack to assign a color to each type.

Tooltips

You can add tootips to availability events just as you would to any other source. Just remember that the event action for your tooltip needs to be enabled for "Editable" AND "Read Only" events in order to work for availability records since they are read-only when "Show as Unavailable" is set to "Yes".

Here is the code for the tooltip shown above: 

dbk.tooltip(
	'<div class = "timeToolTip toolTipHeader">' +
		'Unavilable' +
	'</div>' +
	'<div class = "toolTipAllDay">' +
		event.status +
	'</div>'
);

The classes "timeToolTop," "toolTipHeader," and "toolTipAllDay" are from our timezone example and you can download that CSS here.

Working with Lightning Scheduler in Salesforce

Lightning Schedulers uses this rules-and-exceptions approach to availability. We've put together detailed setup instructions for mapping Lightning Scheduler's objects to DayBack Calendar. Part one: Resource Scheduling. Part two: Availability.

Solicit Availability from Team Members

DayBack can create workflows where your team submits their availability for approval. The business can then accept and lock availability records so they're available for utilization reports. See this in action here.