General

There are no setup fees and there is no minimum contract. All we ask is that you give us 30 day notice should you wish cancel using the service.

Minimum Department Levels allow you to set how many staff members you need at work on any given day within a Group (Department). Once this Level has been reached staff won't be able to request leave on any given day.

You can set Department (we use GROUPS) levels via the Settings Menu > Rules

• Click Create a new Rule
• Enter a Name for the Rule e.g. "Sales Min Dept Level"
• Set Rule Type to GROUP
• Choose the GROUP you want to apply the rule to
• Select function as "Min Group Level" 
• Enter a value for the level
• Choose whether the Approver Decides (and can override) or just Block Leave (at the time of Request)
• Go to Leave Types, for each Leave Type that affects Department Levels, choose Options and check "Include in Min Group" 

If you want to set the Maximum number of Staff who can be Off you can select the function to be: "Max Group Level"

Min. Group Levels also apply to your Manning Levels on each day in the Work Planner for the chosen Group.

As Users on WhosOffice can set to their own Time Zone based on where they work or where their office is based around the world (London, France, US etc.) it is possible that not all Users will be in the same location. Therefore you may need to check your Time Zone setting

• Click on your Name at the top of your screen
• Select My Details / Settings
• Click the Location Settings tab

You may also want to check your staff members Time Zones also, to see what Time Zone they are in.

• From the Settings menu click Users
• Find and click on the required Users Name
• On the left click Account Settings
• See the Timezone drop-down box.

The times for your Work, Leave and Overtime are displayed in your local time. Even if your Co-Workers are in a different time zone, these occurences will also show up in YOUR local time.

e.g.

If your Time Zone is -8 US Pacific  and you work 09:00 - 17.30 - it will display as 09:00 - 17.30

If your co worker Time zone is (GMT/London) and they work 09:00 - 17.30 it will display as 17:00 - 01:30 (your local time).

Calendar feeds are a great feature for accessing WhosOffice Work, Leave and Events data outside of the system. Calendar feeds can be created by an individual user and is unique to that person, allowing them to create a separate calendar in their Outlook, Google or iCal Calendars.

First, the Administrator needs to have granted permission for users to create their own feeds.

• This is accessed via Settings
• User Roles
• Click on the [Role Name] and click the Permissions tab on the left
• The Calendar feed permission is under General.

Once this has been set to "Yes", Users in that Role will then be able to access the Feed Settings under the "My Details/Settings" area.

Using "Feed Settings" in My Details/Settings

• Select the feed duration: 6 months forward/6 months back is usually suitable for most cases.
• Set whether you want to include Work, Leave and / or Events.  
• Choose how you want Times on the Feed to be presented, you can choose to display times of work, leave or events in either your Local Time or relevant to your colleagues who may be in different Time Zones.

Click Save.

Once saved you will then be able to select further options under the Work, Leave and Events tabs to further define your feed.

Click the Feed Link to import directly into your email client (MS Outlook) or copy into your Google Calendar / iCal.

Throughout WhosOffice lots of information will be displayed to each user and, depending which page they are on, it will be specific to either their Work, Leave, Overtime or local Bank Holidays. The Dashboard acts as a central hub for each staff member, offering them snapshot pieces of useful information that can help them when they are looking to make bookings on their WhosOffice account. Below you will find a breakdown of what sort of information is displayed.

Please note that the Dashboard cannot be customised to display tailored information.

VIEW WORK/SHIFTS

Whilst not every company will use the full elements of the working time tools that are available in WhosOffice, it is still a key area which allows staff to correctly book leave and ensure that the right amount of allowance is deducted. On each users Dashboard they will see a countdown of Hours/Days until their next due to be at work. This countdown takes into consideration any leave or company event i.e. Christmas Closures, Bank Holidays.

By clicking on the countdown, the user will then be able to see a monthly overview of their teams working time for the current month.

VIEW LEAVE

This countdown allows the user to quickly see the status of their next planned leave request, the system will show how long until the next leave is due to start but also whether it is still pending or not - being able to see the status could be quite important if the leave is due to start soon but has not yet been approved.

Clicking on this field brings up a monthly overview of your teams leave requests.

VIEW COMPANY EVENTS

In a similar fashion to the 2 countdowns mentioned above, this section counts down to the next planned company event that affects you, or your group, specifically. These Events could represent important calendar events for the department or entire company - or they could just represent any local public holidays.

Clicking on this field brings up a monthly overview of any events that are relevant to you.

REQUEST LEAVE, SUBMIT OVERTIME and HELP & SUPPORT

These options give you direct access to be able to request leave, submit overtime or access any useful help and support articles.

MY CALENDAR FOR

Sometimes a countdown until your next working day, leave request or company event isn't clear enough to see what's really going on for you over a certain period of time. The monthly calendar indicated in the bottom left hand corner of the Dashboard alleviates any potential concerns you might have over spacing out your leave in accordance with your company policies. Using this quick calendar tool, you can very quickly scan throughout the year forwards, but also backwards, to find out exactly what's going on.

As the dashboard is personal to you, this calendar will only display your own information, for information on what's going on within your team(s), you can refer to the dedicated team views.

TASKS, PENDING ITEMS AND NOTIFICATIONS

Within the centre panel of your dashboard there are 2 tabs that are setup to show different pieces of information dependent on your level of access to WhosOffice. 1 other tab is constantly available regardless of your user level access.

• Tasks - From here you can see whether any tasks have been scheduled for you on a certain day of the week or month.
• Pending Items - If you approve for certain members of staff within your company, their pending Leave or Overtime requests will be visible here. By clicking on any of these requests, you will have direct access to the request itself, where you can then action it accordingly.
• Notifications - This allows you to quickly find out if your Leave or Overtime requests have been approved or not. 

Pending items and Notifications can be cleared individually by pressing the bin icon in line with each prompt, or they can be cleared in one go by scrolling down and pressing clear all. This does not affect the leave / overtime request that the prompt refers to.

MY ALLOWANCES

Staff will always be able to view their current active balances for This Year, and any future years, when they've been applied to their profile. Allowances are typically just used for holiday entitlement, but they can also be used to represent alternative means of entitlement such as Parental Leave, TOIL, Purchased Leave etc. The format of the Leave Allowances is made up of the following;

• Allowance Pot - Indicates the Allowance Pot that has been granted to you
• From - Indicates what year the entitlement applies to*
• Open - This value shows you what you started the leave year with, whilst this is normally a static figure that doesn't change, it could change monthly if your company accrues leave on a month by month basis.
• Left - This shows you how much leave entitlement you currently have left.
• C/O Left - If you have carried any leave entitlement over into the current year, you will be able to see how much Carryover you currently have left to take. This field will disappear once Carryover is exhausted, or if it has expired.

It is important to note that Administrators will always be able to view any allowances for staff that they can SEE within the system. This includes any Carryover, and standard leave entitlement.

*whilst the From section indicates the start month and year it applies to, this could be different for various staff, if their holiday years are not the same i.e. Some staff could run from Jan - Dec, whilst others might be Apr - Mar.

 COMPANY MESSAGES

This section allows you to view any important company messages that have been setup to be displayed on your Dashboard. This can also be viewed next to the Notification icon in the top right hand corner of your page

While you can change a user's holiday year within WhosOffice, doing so requires a bit of a 'stepping-backward' process - before you can change the holiday year, you must remove any allowances, and before you can remove the allowances you must remove any leave requests. For this reason, if the user has a lot of history in WhosOffice, it may be easier to delete them (downloading the required copy of their data beforehand) and then set them up again with the new holiday year.

To remove the Leave and Allowances;

1. Go to Leave > Leave Admin. From here you'll be able to find and cancel any leave requests (all leave, past and future will need to be removed)
2. Go to Settings > Users > click on a Users' name > Leave Allowances, where you can delete each allowance pot.

Once you've completed the above, refresh your page. On the resulting screen, the Allowance Calendar Year option will become available for you to select the correct one going forward, then click Save.

You will then need to refresh your page again once saved, this will then enable you to be able to re-enter any allowances and leave requests into the system for this user.

If you are changing the holiday year for a large number of staff, feel free to contact the support team, who may be able to assist with a bulk change to the holiday year for the required users.

To create a new user, you can;

• Go to the Settings and click Users
• Click Create/Import User
• Enter the individual's details, the Staff code and Title are optional but the following must be included:
  • Name
  • Employment start date
  • Allowance calendar year
  • Working pattern (if you choose None, you will still need to enter a working pattern on the Work Planner page later)
  • Pattern start date (this is usually a Monday)
  • User role
  • Region
  • Default group (i.e. department)
  • Email address
  • Password, which must follow the requirements (https://www.whosoffice.com/support/knowledgebase/password-security)
• Click Save
• At first, the group that you selected as their default group will be the only group the user is IN and the only group they can SEE; to place them in additional groups or let them see additional groups, go to the Groups tab on the left and use the dropdowns within
• Then to assign the user an approver, go to the Leave approvers tab on the left and assign at least an Approver 1, then click Save
• To apply the user to any relevant allowance policies, click the Leave policies tab and use the dropdown within, then click Save
• To set up the user's initial allowance, go to the Leave allowances tab and select the relevant pot, then choose the Unit (days/hours) and enter the Opening and Remaining balance. Click Add.

Depending on your company's preferences, some of the above steps, like applying allowance policies, make not be applicable. Once you have set up the user, you can use their Account Details tab to send a welcome message (via the button at the bottom right).

If you have forgotten your password, there is a 'Forgot your password' link on the login page of your company's WhosOffice account that will allow you to receive a new password. After clicking this link, you will be asked to enter your email address, and then you will be sent an email containing your new login details.

If you don't see an email, please check that it has not gone to your Spam / Junk folder, and that you have whitelisted emails from no-reply [at] whosoffice [dot] com. 

Once you have logged in, you will be asked to create a new password. Complete this, and you will be sent straight to your WhosOffice dashboard.