How Using Daylite’s Calendar Helps Us Plan Better

Quick Tips / January 23, 2017 / JD

Here at Marketcircle, we face many of the same challenges you do, and as you’d expect, we use Daylite to help overcome them. Working with customers, scheduling meetings, managing projects and tasks we do it all and we wanted to share some of the solutions we have found with you.

TrackingVacations

Our team is just shy of 40 people, and we depend on each other to get the job done. If we aren’t aware of when someone is taking time off, work gets delayed, decisions deferred and deadlines are at risk of being missed.

When an employee schedules time off, its is often months in advance, and they aren’t going to be the top thing on everyone’s mind. We needed a workflow that ensures were aware of personal days and vacations so that when we planned meetings and initiatives, there were no conflicts. In particular, this is important for our customer support team, as well as our Cloud engineering team, work different shifts or are on call. If we didn’t take the time to consider a workflow, we would end up understaffed, reacting slowly to Cloud issues, and having to delay initiatives until critical people come back from time off.

To solve this problem, we use appointment categories in Daylite for personal days, and vacations. Now when we plan initiatives, meetings, and shifts we can reference Smart Lists or the User & Resources calendar to see who is available and can immediately get the answer. We can now make adjustments to ensure we are adequately staffed to address any of the challenges we face.

Pro Tip: Invite anyone who needs to be aware of the time off, so it appears on the home screen

Create a new Category

The first thing you need to do is create a category in Daylite for the appointments and choose colour for the category. This way you can quickly see that each appointment is different based on the colour. We recommend a bright colour like yellow so you can see the date easily.

“The customer service team works different shifts and each person’s shift rotates. Using a calendar category for time off I can plan weeks or even months ahead of time and ensure we always have the right coverage.”

– Mat Ives, Customer Service Manager

 

  1. Open Daylite and choose Daylite > Preferences > Categories > Appointments Click the + symbol and name the category
  2. Choose a colour by clicking on Colour_75x25 . We recommend something bright and easy to see the category on the calendar
  3. Close Daylite Preferences

Create the Appointment

Now when you create an appointment you can make the category Vacation and the colour of the appointment changes.

  1. Go to My Calendar in Daylite
  2. Click on  NewAppt_120x17
  3. Add all the important information for the appointment and check off AllDay_68x19 check box then click Save
  4. As an additional step choose the Type as Vacation and get a Plane_21x21 Icon next to the appointment’s name in calendar for easier viewing

Plan Ahead

When you are planning ahead you can now look at the Users & Resources calendar and see the appointments for all your employees in Daylite. When you look here, you will easily be able to identify when your staff has scheudled time off and you can adjust your plans as you see fit.

  1. Select on the left hand side bar and choose Users&Resources2_120x20
  2. Choose and click on the employee’s you want to see

Pro Tip: If you want to see all employees click All

You can can also create a Smart List for your team and see time off. This way you can always have this on top of mind.

Here is an example Smart List you can try:SmartList
Avoid forgotten scheduling conflicts scheduled well in advanced and always have the right plan and staffing to meet your business needs. Create a category for vacations and other reasons for time off in Daylite you can won’t put you in the position of being understaffed and unable to move initiatives forward.

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