LeaveWizard's Online Help

Showing and hiding allowances and leave details

2012-01-17T04:01:00.001-08:00

Different companies place varying levels of importance on the sensitivity of leave types, for example, some companies may want everybody in the company to know about all leave whether it be sickness, unpaid or holiday, whereas others may want line managers to only see sickness details of their team members and not all employees within the company.

LeaveWizard supports this, allowing each leave type to be assigned a visibility rating. This is simply the role level at which the leave type is visible i.e. ‘Administrator’, ‘Team Manager’ or ‘Employee’. If a leave type’s visibility is ‘Employee’ then it can be seen by all employees in the company. If it is set to ‘Team Manager’ then it can only be seen by managers within the company.

It is possible to set the visibility of the entire leave type, the leave type's allowance and the leave request details. Changing these values will have the following impact:

Visible To: Any requests of this type will be visible on leave charts to all users with the selected role

Allowance Visible To: The allowance of this type will only be visible to users with the selected role i.e. you may not want employees/line managers to know what their sickness allowance might be

Details Visible To: The details entered when the leave was requested will only be visible to users with the selected role i.e. the details of sickness may only be visible to Administrators

Carry overs explained

2012-01-16T06:39:00.000-08:00

Carry overs are used to ‘carry’ over unused allowance between leave years. In the examples below we use days for simplicity. The same rules apply to hour based allowances. Let’s take a look at the following example:

Fred has 20 days allowance of type Holiday for 2011.

He has used only 16 days

You create a rule that Fred can carry over to the next leave year up to a maximum of 5 days

When you run the Carry Over process it will identify that Fred has 4 unused days and will carry them over to the new year.

What we record and what it means?

We record Allowance for year, Maximum days that can be carried over and number of days that have been carried over. In the example above for 2011 we would have

Allowance for year – 20

Maximum days to carry over – 5

Carried over from 2010 – 0 (assume 2011 is the our first year with LeaveWizard)

For 2012 then we would get:

Allowance for year – 24

Maximum days to carry over – 5 (this can be changed throughout the year)

Carried over from 2011 – 4

When you get to 2013 we will then deduct the Carried over days from 2011 before calculating how many days can be carried over. E.g. if during 2012 Fred uses 15 of his 24 days and you allow carrying over up to 10 days to 2012 then the carry over process will identify Fred has 9 unused days and will then deduct 4days already carried over from 2011 and therefore will carry over only 5 days. We use this rule to ensure that days cannot be carried over more than once.

So how does this look in the system.

To configure Maximum days to carry over and any previously carried over days go to Administration –> Configure Allowances. Select the relevant event type from the drop down and click edit to modify the values for the appropriate team member. It should look like this:

To run Carry Overs – Find the Run Carry Overs button at the bottom of the same page. Note that this only has effect after the end of the leave year so you need to run it when leave year of the employee(s) has changed. e.g. if my leave year runs from 1st Jan to 31st Dev to Carry over to 2013 I need to run the processing on or after 1st Jan 2013.

And finally to see carried over days Administrators can look at the same Administration/Configure Allowances list and Employees can look at My Leave/ My Allowances (accessible from the Dashboard) for information about personal carried over figures.

We hope this article provides a good explanation of carry overs and in case you have further questions do not hesitate to get in touch. The fastest way to do that is to use the Submit a Support Request button from within the application – you can find it at the bottom right of your LeaveWizard screen just below My Leave This Month.

Allowing events to be recorded on non-working days

2012-01-04T12:50:00.001-08:00

Sometimes you want to be able to record an event on a non-working day – this might be a trade show or something similar. By default only “Event or Company Event” event types are allowed to be recorded on non-working days but you can change this behaviour by going to the “Administration | Customise Event Types” page as seen below and checking/un-checking the “Enable Non-Working Days” check box.

If this is setup then the employees allowance will be reduced when the event is recorded on either a working day or a non-working day according to the relevant work pattern.

Allowing events to be requested in the past

2012-01-04T12:44:00.001-08:00

By default only sickness event types are allowed to recorded in the past but you can change this behaviour by going to the “Adminstration | Customise Event Types” page as seen below and checking/un-checking the “Enable In The Past” check box.

When the enable in the past option is selected, Employees and Managers can request that event type to be in the past. Administrators can request any event type to be in the past whether the option is checked or not.

How to allow or disallow users editing requested events

2012-01-04T12:39:00.001-08:00

By default all event types are editable but you can change this behaviour by going to the “Adminstration | Customise Event Types” page as seen below and un-checking the “Is Editable” check box.

Events marked as Is Editable can be edited by an employee or manager if it is in a Pending or Approved state and at any time if by an Administrator. If an event requires approval and it’s details are changed then the old approval requests are cancelled and a new approval request is created automatically. The approvers will receive an “Event has been re-submitted” message.

Setting your default company leave year

2012-01-04T12:14:00.001-08:00

You can easily configure you default company leave year to be any day of any month in the year. The default set here will be used for all employees in all workgroups unless the relevant setting is overridden at the work group or employee level.

To change you leave year following these instructions:

From the dashboard, click the “Administration” link, this will take you to the main administration console.
Click the “Company Settings” link, this will display the available company settings including the default leave start day and month.
Enter your required leave start day and month (where January = 1 and December = 12)
Click the “Submit” button to confirm your changes.

New User Dashboard

2012-01-02T02:59:00.001-08:00

The old LeaveWizard dashboard was very "Inbox" centric and for those that did not manage their inbox very often when they logged into LeaveWizard all they would see was a wall messages and users had to scroll and click a few tabs in order to see the information that they really wanted.

The new dashboard addresses each of these issues by simplifying the user workspace in the following ways:

Easier access to allowance details
More intuitive positioning of command options such as request leave and leave charts
Reduced number of inbox messages displayed
Reduced number of approval messages displayed
Addition of quick links for administrators to get to the tasks they need to do quicker
Addition of a Reports tab on the menu bar for administrators to get quicker access to reports

Although we've made these changes to the user dashboard to make using LeaveWizard even easier we are conscious that not everybody likes immediate change. So this month with have introduced a new feature notification mechanism which allows all of our users to choose whether they want to use the new feature or not.

When you first login you will see the notification bar which looks something like this:

As you can see you now have the option to "Try it out", clicking this link will turn on the new feature temporarily for your current login session. The "Tell me more" link will take you to a help article that explains the new feature. Clicking the "Hide" link will hide the notification for the duration of your current logged in session.

After clicking the "Try it out" link the new dashboard will be loaded. The first thing you may notice is the notification bar at the top of the screen. This allows you to either confirm that you would like to set the new dashboard as your default or you can revert back to the old version if you don't like the new one.

We would really love to you to tell us what you think about the new dashboard to see how we could make it even better.

Login using your Google account or Open Id

2011-10-05T16:01:00.001-07:00

LeaveWizard supports the ability for you to be authenticated using your Google account or any other Open Id.

What is Open Id?

You can find out more details about what Open Id is by taking a look at this website http://openid.net/get-an-openid/what-is-openid/, but in simple terms it allows you to log in to multiple web sites without needing to create new passwords.

There are many large organisations including Google and Yahoo! that are open id providers so the chances are you already have an open id, take a look at this web page for details on how to get an open id http://openid.net/get-an-openid/.

How do I use Open Id with LeaveWizard?

We’ve modified our sign on page to include an option to either sign on using your existing LeaveWizard account or sign on using an open id.

In order to associate your open id with LeaveWizard you need to go to the sign on page. If you are already logged because LeaveWizard has remembered who you are from your previous login you will need to click the Logout link at the top right of the page.

Sign in using an Open Id account

Once you are on the sign on page either click the Google image (if you have a Google account) or if you use another open id provider enter your unique open id into the text box. You will notice that a discovery and authentication process will start and if successful you will presented with a “Log In” button. Click this button and if you have not already signed into your open id account you will see a pop up dialog box that contains you chosen open id provider requesting your authentication credentials (in our example this is Google). Enter your credentials and sign in to this account.

Authorize LeaveWizard to use your details

Once you have signed into your open id account, then you will be asked whether you allow LeaveWizard to have access to some requested information. LeaveWizard requires your email address, first name and last name so that we can pre-populate some account details for you.

Click the “Allow” button and you will see the pop up dialog close and you will be redirected to a Link Open Id With LeaveWizard account page – you will only need to do this step once.

Associate Open Id with an existing account

If you already have an account with LeaveWizard you will need sign in with your existing email address and password – this is to make sure you are who you say you are and is the only time you will need to enter your password again provided you are logged in with your open id account.

Congratulations you should now be logged into LeaveWizard without having to enter a password whenever you are logged in using your specified open id.

Or create a new account using your Open Id

If you do not already have a LeaveWizard account simple click the “Create New Account” button and you will be redirected to our registration page. To make registration a little simpler some of the details from your open id account will be used to prepopulate your registration details.

Fill in the remaining details (you will not need to enter a password at this point) and click the register button. Take a look at this help article for more details on registering http://leavewizardonlinehelp.blogspot.com/2009/12/registering-and-logging-inout.html.

How do I remove an associated open id account?

To remove an associated open id account simply go to the My Settings page, under the “Linked Accounts” section click the “Remove” link next to the account you wish to remove.

New LeaveRestriction user groups

2011-09-05T16:05:00.000-07:00

We have extended the functionality of Leave Restriction user groups to allow specifying the maximum number of employees that can be on leave at the same time. This provides the same restriction as in workgroups except that in the user group you can create additional groups outside user groups. For example you may have 5 directors which are in different workgroups and you need to enforce that at any given time at least 2 of them need to be at work. To solve the problem you could create a new user group of type leave restriction that has a maximum on leave number set to 3 which means that at least 2 of your directors should always be at work.

Here’s how you can do that. Logged in as administrator, navigate to Administration/User groups and create a new LeaveRestriction user group as shown in the screenshot.

That’s it. Once created the restriction is now in place. With our test group we have also created leave requests for 2 of the employees in it for the same date as displayed below:

Now if we want to request leave for a third employee from the leave restriction group we will get an error stating that we have reached the maximum number as specified in the restriction. The error message will look like the one below:

This is another feature that was suggested by our brilliant customers and we have added it to LeaveWizard to make your leave management experience even simpler and smoother.

The Bradford Factor

2011-09-05T15:54:00.000-07:00

LeaveWizard now supports automatic Bradford Factor calculation. If you are interested in why you may want to use the Bradford factor you can read more about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Factor

This feature allows you to configure your LeaveWizard settings to either use or not the Bradford factor.

Initially the implementation included all event types in the factor calculation. As of 6th October 2011 you can also choose which event types to include in Bradford factor calculation. For example if you want to have the calculation only for unauthorized absense - for example sickness and /or emergency leave then you can edit the appropriate event types and select to include them in the Bradford factor calculation at the same time making sure none of your other event types are selected.
You can change this setting from the details page of the event type.

With regards to the company level setting - the default is to not calculate the factor for your employees. In order to enable the automatic calculation you need to log in as administrator and go to Administration/Settings and then tick the Bradford Factor checkbox and save your changes as displayed in the screenshot below.

When you switch on the calculation for the first time it may take several minutes for the first recalculation to take place. The recalculation then is automatically done every night so there is no need for you to do anything.
Once the option is switched on you can view the Bradford factor values in the list of employees. When logged in as administratior navigate to Administration and then Add/Edit team members. The factor numbers will show in the list as demonstrated below:

This feature was requested by several of our customers so we hope you find it to be an useful addition to the rest of LeaveWizard’s many features.

Time Off in Lieu

2011-07-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

LeaveWizard now supports Time Off In Lieu (TOIL). This feature allows you to configure an event type to allow TOIL request. When a TOIL request is approved the requested number of days/hours is then added to the employee's allowance.

To configure an event type for TOIL go to "Dashboard | Administration | Event Types" and in the list of event types click the Edit link of the type you wish to configure. On the details screen tick the Enable Time Off in Lieu check box (see the picture below) and then click Submit to save your changes.

Once you have at least one event type that supports TOIL all employees will be able to see a new action in the list of actions on their dashboard as per the image below.

To request TOIL click the Request Time Off in Lieu button to fill in the details in the request form.

You have to specify the date and how many days/hours you would like to request. Provide details as appropriate and then click submit to send the form.

Once your form is submitted it is sent to Administrators to approve. Only one approval is required and it can be performed by any of the administrators.

To see a list of TOIL requests go to "Dashboard | Administration" and under Reports follow the Time Off In Lieu Requests link which will take you to the list of TOIL requests.

This list allows to you approve or reject requests, browse, filter, sort and export TOIL requests very much like all other lists in LeaveWizard.

Once a TOIL request is approved the number of days/hours requested gets added to this employee’s allowance for the current year. Note that TOIL allowances will not be carried over to the next year – any TOIL approved allowance must be used in the current leave year and is ignored when running the carry over process.

Accrued allowance for event types

2011-06-24T02:25:00.000-07:00

We have recently introduced the option to make an event type’s allowance an accrued allowance. What this means is that you can specify how many days or hours is an employee required to work to gain one day/hour allowance for that type. The allowance for a type you decide to set as ‘accrued’ becomes a calculated value which the system automatically updates every day.

For example:

Jeff can have up to 20 days holiday per year. However at any given time he can only book up to the number of days he has already accrued by working. Assuming Jeff is expected to work 240 days per year in order to gain his full allowance of 20 days holiday then he would require working 12 days to accrue one day allowance.

To set that up we have entered 12 in the allowance field and have ticked both Accrued and Accrue work days only check boxes. The Accrued check box makes this type’s allowance accrued and the Accrue work days only specifies if only the work days (based on the employee’s current work pattern) will be used to accrue allowance.

You may decide to accrue on all days not just work days in which case the work pattern is ignored and every day is counted when calculating the new accrued allowance. Please note that if your allowance is in hours and you want to make it an accrued allowance you cannot accrue on all days so Accrue on work days only is mandatory if you select Accrued for hour based allowance.

Should you decide to change the allowance of an event type to no longer be accrued you can simply un-tick the Accrued checkbox and specify the new default allowance for this event type and finally submit your changes. This will result in all employees’ allowances for this event type being reverted to the allowance value you specified.

Configuring Leave Visibility User Groups

2011-05-16T04:26:00.001-07:00

There are some times when it might be useful for users to see a leave chart for employees from different departments across the company. An example of this might be if the Director of a company approves leave for the upper management team, they may wish to see who is off at any one time. This feature introduces the ability to create a leave visibility user group in which users from various workgroups can be grouped together.

When viewing the Leave Chart, it is then possible to select the User Group you would like to view the chart for. There are a couple of different ways that you set up Leave Visibility User Groups (LVUG), these are discussed below:

Configuring from the Approver Set Up page

This is probably the quickest way to set up LVUGs, simply navigate to the "Administration | Approver Setup" page, this will display a list of all the approvers within the system. Hovering over an approver will display a tool tip containing a list of all the employees that they approve leave for.

At the bottom of this list you will see a Leave Visibility User Group section with a "Create" link. Clicking this link will take you to the Leave Visibility User Group page and pre-populate the employees that are currently approved by the approver. Simply click "Submit" and the user group will be created.

At the time of writing LVUGs are not automatically maintained and therefore it will be a manual task to add and remove members of a LVUG once the group has been created.

Configuring from the Manage User Groups page

The alternative way to create a LVUG is to navigate to the "Administration | Manage User Groups" page. Click on “New User Group”, give your new user group a name and choose the type of group that you require, in this case it will be a Leave Visibility user group. Next, select who the owner of the user group is going to be from the list of available line managers or administrators.

You can set up as many different Leave Visibility user groups as you like and you can add entire work groups or individual employees to the user groups.

Choose which work groups or employees should be in the Leave Visibility user group by simply selecting the required items from the left hand side of the selection box and clicking the arrow to move them to the right hand side of the selection box.

How is my billing information processed?

2011-02-21T14:45:00.001-08:00

Our servers are encrypted using 128 bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption which means that any data you enter into our website is secure, you can find out more about how we handle your data in our privacy policy.

When LeaveWizard processes your billing information we pass it directly to our fully PCI Compliant partner Recurly.com via a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection. Recurly.com will then process your credit card details and notify us of successful or failed transactions. We do not store any of your billing information directly on our servers.

Subscribing to a paid plan

2011-02-21T11:30:00.001-08:00

This article is intended to walk you through the process of subscribing to a paid for plan within LeaveWizard. In order to manage your account details you will need to be logged on as an administrator.

Navigate to the “Account Details” page by clicking the “Administration | Account Details” link, this will take you to the account details page.

Select the “Confirm” option, this will take you the change plan wizard that will walk you through the steps necessary to confirm the currently selected plan.

Choosing your plan

The select plan page of the wizard gives you details of the plan you are currently on including the plan name, cost of the plan, the number of users supported by the plan and the number of active users you have in the system.

Your selected plan will be highlighted in blue with the word “Confirm”, you will notice the list contains other available plans. An upgrade or downgrade does not constitute any loss in functionality provided by LeaveWizard but allows more or less users to use the system. If you are happy with the plan that has been pre-selected simply click the “Confirm” link and you will be taken to the next stage of the wizard.

If you want to downgrade your plan because you have less employees than the selected plan provides, simply click the “Downgrade” link. Please note that you will not be able to downgrade to any plan if you have more active employees than the plan supports. If this is the case, simply de-activate an employee by following these instructions. Alternatively if your active user requirements have increased simply select the “Upgrade” link.

If for any reason the details of a plan are not correct or you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us at support@leavewizard.com.

Entering billing information

The next step is to supply your billing information. The personal information section will be pre-populated with the details you provided when signing up to LeaveWizard but this should be the first and last name of the card holder that will be paying for the services.

The email address supplied will be used to keep you informed of any payments, refunds, cancellation, changes to your plan or changes to your billing information so it is important that this email address is valid. This email address can be different from your login information and will not change the way you login into LeaveWizard.

After entering your personal information you will need to select the credit card that you want to use. Enter the relevant credit card details into the payment method section.

Finally you will need to enter the correct billing address for the specified credit card and click the next button.

Change Plan Summary

The final step in the change plan wizard is a summary of you plan options, you should review the information shown. Once you are happy to continue, simply click the “Finish” button and your change plan request will be processed.

You will then receive an email confirmation containing the change of plan details for your records.

How can I view my account details

2011-02-21T11:29:00.001-08:00

This article describes how you can view your current account details with LeaveWizard, you will need to be logged on as an administrator in order to view the details of your account.

Navigate to the “Administration” page and click the “Account Details” link.

This will display your current account details where you can see:

the name of your current plan is
how many employees are allowed by you current plan
what the cost of your current plan is
how many active employees you currently have
when your subscription started
when your subscription will end

You also have a couple of options:

Change Plan – this option will allow you to change you current plan by upgrading to a plan that supports more employees or downgrading to a plan with less employees.
Change Payment Details – this option allows you to change your current payment information such as billing address, credit card details or the billing contact email address that should be used.
Confirm – this option (highlighted in red) is only seen when your account has a custom price and you are required to confirm that you wish to use the plan at the specified price.

Viewing More Information

LeaveWizard uses a partner called Recurly.com for our billing and subscription services. We shall be bringing more and more account management functionality into the LeaveWizard application but in the mean time it is possible to manage your subscription from within your LeaveWizard Recurly Account.

You will need a password to access your LeaveWizard Recurly Account, to set this up simply click on the “View Recurly Account” link. This will take you to the Recurly website. Enter the email address that you entered for your billing details and click the “Reset Password” link.

You will then be sent instructions detailing how to setup a password for your billing account.

Once you have setup your password you will be able to login to your LeaveWizard Recurly Account. This page shows you details of your current subscription, your billing information and a list of previous invoices.

From within this page you can update your billing information or if you would like to cancel your subscription with LeaveWizard simply click the “Cancel Subscription” button.

How to share your company calendar

2011-02-01T14:11:00.001-08:00

LeaveWizard allows you to integrate your leave calendar with MS Outlook and other iCalendar compatible clients such as Google Calendar, you can find out how to do this in the following help article – setting up MS Outlook Integration.

By default only administrators can get access to the Outlook Integration for the entire companies events but provided that you are happy to share all of the published events with all of your staff members there is no reason why you cannot simply share the calendar website address with them.

How do I share my company calendar with other employees?

After logging in as an administrator, navigate to the “Administration | Settings” page, at the bottom of the page you should see the Outlook Integration section which looks something like the image below:

Right-click on the “Subscribe to all company leave” link and in the pop up menu that appears, if you are using Internet Explorer select “Copy Shortcut” or if you are using Google Chrome select “Copy link address”.

Paste the copied link into an email and send this to anybody you wish to have access to all company leave events.

What does the recipient need to do?

Once a recipient has received your calendar link, they will have a couple of options depending on the iCalendar client that they use.

Option 1 – Use Internet Explorer to launch a default iCalendar client

The recipient can copy and paste the link into the Internet Explorer address bar and navigate to the address – this will then launch any “webcal” client on their local machine and subscribe to the link, simply follow the steps required by the iCalendar client.

Option 2 – Manually add an Internet Calendar to MS Outlook

Option 1 is probably the easiest way to do this but if you would like to add the calendar manually to MS Outlook then go to the “Tools | Account Settings” menu (as shown below):

Next, select the Internet Calendars tab and then click the “New…” button, this is highlighted below. You will then be asked to enter the location of the Internet Calendar, at this point paste the link that was copied from the email.

Click on the “Add” button and you will be asked to specify some details about the calendar, enter what ever you like here and click okay.

Your new calendar will be added and available from within MS Outlook.

Option 3 – Add an internet calendar to Google Calendar

If you use Google Calendar instead of MS Outlook it is just as easy to integrate your shared calendar. From within Google Calendar click the “Add” button and choose the “Add by URL” option.

You will then be presented with the “Add by URL” pop up, paste the calendar address that you copied from the email into the URL box and click “Add Caldendar”.

Once the calendar has been added you can select to change details about the calendar by clicking on the drop down menu and selecting “Calendar Settings”.

From this page you can change various details about the calendar and for those a bit more techie amongst you, you can even copy and paste the html code to embed the calendar in a blog or a website of your choosing.

Restrict certain employees being off at the same time

2010-10-31T16:12:00.001-07:00

As an administrator, from the dashboard navigate to the Adminstration | Manage User Groups page.

Click on “New User Group”, give your new user group a name and choose the type of group that you require, in this case it will be a Leave Restriction user group. You can set up as many different leave restriction user groups as you like and you can add entire work groups or individual employees to the user groups.

Choose which work groups or employees should be in the leave restriction group by simply selecting the required items from the left hand side of the selection box and clicking the arrow to move them to the right hand side of the selection box.

When a member of staff requests leave, LeaveWizard checks whether they belong to any Leave Restriction User Groups, if they are a member of a user group then a check is made to see whether any other employee within the user group has already pre-booked the required dates and if this is the case the user requesting the leave is informed and is not allowed to book the required time off.

Adding Secondary Approvers

2010-10-31T16:07:00.001-07:00

As an administrator, from the dashboard navigate to the Adminstration | Manage User Groups page.

Click on “New User Group”, give your user group a name and choose the type of group that you require, in this case it will be a Secondary Approver user group. Once you’ve chosen the type of user group you are presented with a drop down list of potential users that can be selected as a secondary approver (they must be either in Line Manager or Administrator role). Choose who the approver should be and then select which workgroups or employees the selected approver will be the secondary approver for.

When an employee subsequently submits an leave request for approval, their regular approver (team leader or assigned approver) will receive the first approval request as normal. If this approver then approves the leave request, a second approval is sent to the nominated secondary approver requesting their final approval of the request. The requesting employee is notified at each stage so they know how far through the approval process their leave request is.

How to manage room bookings

2010-09-10T12:44:00.001-07:00

The room booking functionality allows administrators to set up a number of rooms that are available to book by any of the employees with the company.

Disable or enable room bookings

When you first register an account with LeaveWizard the room booking functionality will be enabled by default however it is possible to turn the room booking function off if your company does not require it. Simply navigate to the Administration | Settings page and un-tick or tick the “Enable Room Booking” tick box.

Choosing who can manage room bookings

From the Administration | Settings page (shown above) it is possible to determine which role, Employee, Manager or Administrator can manage room bookings. Which ever role has the “Can Book Rooms” functionality has complete control over the room bookings and can add, edit or delete any booking even if it wasn’t created by them. It is also possible to setup specifically named users who are able to manage room bookings, this is explained in the following section.

Setting up a room booking user groups

As mentioned in the previous section it is possible to choose who can administrate room bookings by setting up a room booking user group. Simply navigate to the Administration | Manage User Groups page and click the New User Group link.

Enter a name for the user group and then select the Room Booking type. Next, choose which work groups or employees should be setup to be allowed to administer room bookings. If you choose a work group then all members of that work group will be able to control room bookings. Click the submit button to enable the selected users with the room booking functionality.

Setting up rooms

Once you have decided who is going to control the room bookings the next step is to create some rooms that your employees can book. Simply navigate to the Administration | Rooms page and click on “New Room”. Choose a name for the room and click the submit button to accept your changes.

Booking Rooms

Booking rooms couldn’t be simpler, just click on the “Room Booking” link and you will be shown the room calendar. Find the date you would like to book by choosing the appropriate date from the date selector and the room you would like to book from the drop down menu.

Find the time slot you would like and double click it enter the room booking details as shown in the screen shot above. Click the insert link to confirm the insertion of a booking. By default this will create a 1 hour booking however it is possible to extend or reduce the room booking time by simply dragging the booking to the relevant time slot.

It is not possible to double book a meeting and it is also not possible for the same person to book two different rooms at the same time.

To edit a booking simply drag it to change the start time or duration or double click on it to edit the details of the booking.

Restricting leave

2010-03-16T07:56:00.000-07:00

When an administrator first sets up company details each employee will use the default allowance assigned to each company event type. For example the default allowance for the 'Holiday' company event type might be 25 days. If for some reason an employee requires more or less holiday for the leave year then an administrator can use the 'Restricting leave' process to adjust their holiday allowance accordingly.

Only administrator users have the ability to restrict leave. Leave can be restricted in the following ways:

- You can ensure that users are only able to book off the number of days that they are entitled to

- You can cap the number of people from the same department or team who are able to book the same time off. You can do this at company level, so that the same restriction applies to all departments across the company, or you can specify a limit at department level if this differs from others within the company.

Restricting users to their allowance

Administrators can ensure that users are only able to book off the number of days that they are entitled to by configuring their leave allowances. To do this:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will then be taken to the Administration Setup screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. Please follow the ‘Configure Allowances’ link as shown in the screenshot.

3. Here you will be able to view a list of employees and their leave allowance for particular leave event types. This information can be filtered by department or by specific employee using the drop down menus shown in the below screenshot.

4. Click ‘New Team Member Allowance’. You should now be able to see the Allowance Details form which lets you create a new allowance. See screenshot below.

5. As you can see on the screenshot you will need to specify employee name, the company event type you are specifying allowance for, the calendar year you are setting the allowance for, what the allowance is (in number of days) and how many of these days may be carried over.

6. When you’re ready click ‘Submit’ and this will save the changes and will take you back to the allowances overview screen.

How do I ensure that two people from the same department or team cannot book leave for the same time?

Administrators can cap the number of people from the same department or team who are able to book the same time off. You can do this at company level, so that the same restriction applies to all departments across the company, or you can specify a limit at department level if this differs from others within the company. To perform either of these tasks you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

To cap at company level:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar, then click ‘Settings’ (see below screenshot).

2. You will then see the Company Details form which shows your current stored settings. As you can see from the screenshot below, you can set a default for the maximum number of staff who are allowed to book leave at the same time. This applies across all departments. When you’re ready click ‘Submit’ and this will store your settings/save any changes.

To cap at department level:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar, then click ‘Manage workgroups’. This will take you to the list of already recorded Workgroups. Locate the Workgroup whose details you would like to edit and click ‘Edit’ as shown in the screenshot below.

2. Clicking ‘Edit’ will navigate to the Department Details form which will allow you to modify the Department’s details.

3. As you can see highlighted on the screenshot above you can specify the maximum number of people who can be on leave from this department at any one time.

Outlook Integration

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LeaveWizard provides you with the option of integrating your Leave Wizard account with your Outlook account so that you can view leave information in your LeaveWizard system via your Outlook calendar.

How do I achieve Outlook Integration?

If you are a LeaveWizard administrator user then you have the option to either subscribe to the whole company calendar or just your own personal calendar. If you are a team member user then you only have the option to subscribe to your personal calendar.

1. If you are an administrator user and you wish to subscribe to the whole company calendar, please navigate to the correct page by following Administration/Settings. You will then see the Company Details form which shows your current stored settings. Below this you will see a section entitled ‘Outlook Integration’.

2. If you are a manager or team member user, or an administrator user and you wish to subscribe to your personal calendar, please navigate to My Settings/Outlook Integration.

3. To enable LeaveWizard to integrate with your Outlook account, you will need to tick the box ‘Enabled’ as shown in the below screenshot. By default Outlook Integration is disabled, this is because the iCalendar subscription protocol known as “webcal:” does not support the secure https protocol and therefore any calendar event information that you publish will not be encrypted. You must understand this before you enable Outlook Integration. If you have any questions or concerns about this then please do not hesitate to contact our support team.

4. To start the integration process you will then need to click on the link ‘Subscribe to <calendar type> leave.’ Your computer will then bring up an ‘External Protocol Request’ requesting permission to launch an external application to allow the two software packages (LeaveWizard and Outlook) to be integrated. You will need to click ‘launch application’ here (see below screenshot).

7. Your Outlook account will be automatically opened and a pop up box will appear asking whether you wish to add this internet calendar to Outlook and subscribe to updates (see below screenshot). Click yes here. This will integrate your LeaveWizard calendar with MS Outlook. Whenever you send and receive email your local copy of your LeaveWizard calendar will be automatically updated with any new leave requests.

8. You also have the option to ‘Download leave file for the entire company’ or ‘Download your personal leave file’. Clicking the ‘Download leave file for the entire company’ gives you a one-off snapshot of all leave contained within LeaveWizard. This file will not be synchronised whenever mail is sent from within Outlook.

Company Event Type Not Required

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LeaveWizard allows you create as many different company specific event types as you like. There are six different global types of event based upon which you can configure your own company specific events. The criteria for each of these global types is detailed in the table below, you will need to select the one that your own event falls into, and specify it as this type when setting up your company event.

Name	Description	Is Company	Requires Approval	Is Paid	Is Time Off	Is Sickness	Is Allowanced
Company leave	Typical events of this type would be a Christmas shut down period or any other time that the company may shut down and therefore is a compulsory holiday – this event type cannot be booked by employees	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Company event	This might be something like a conference or event where it is useful for employees of the company to know that the event is taking place but this does not prevent them from taking holiday on those dates – this event type cannot be booked by employees	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Holiday	The standard type of event used for employees to book holiday, this event type requires approval	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Sickness	The standard type of event used for employees to book sickness or any other kind of absence that is not holiday	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Unpaid leave	This event type can be requested by employees and approved by managers when they may have run out of regular holiday allowance	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes
Event	Use this event type for things like “Working from home” or “Meeting” or any other type of event that does not require approval and does not have a related allowance	No	No	No	No	No	No

What if one of the six global types is not required by my company?

If one of the global types is not required by your company, for example if you do not allow unpaid leave, please follow these steps:

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user.

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will then be taken to the Administration Setup screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. Please follow the ‘Customise Event Types’ link as shown in the screenshot.

3. Here you will be able to view the list of event types already recorded. If you have just opened your account then you will see the global event types, similar to the image below.

4. Click ‘Edit’ next to the company event type concerned. You should now be able to see the Event Type Details form which lets you customise the event type. See screenshot below.

5. Where the form allows you to specify ‘Is Active’ you should untick the box. This will prevent employees from being able to request leave of the type concerned. When you’re ready click ‘Submit’ and this will save the changes and will take you back to the list of company event types.

How can I quickly check what the remaining leave allowances are within my team?

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For administrator or manager users, the ‘My Leave’ section of the LeaveWizard dashboard allows you to view your own personal leave summary, as well as a summary of your team’s remaining leave allowances.

To view a summary of your team’s leave allowances, click on the ‘My Team’s Allowance’ tab of the ‘My Leave’ section (see below screenshot). Here you can use the drop down boxes to select the team in question, which allowance summary you want to view (holiday, company leave, unpaid leave or sickness) and the year. You can then view a summary of all team members: how many days are in their allowance and how many of these are remaining.

Administration tasks (making a start)

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Once you have registered with LeaveWizard as an administrator and you log in for the first time, you will see your LeaveWizard dashboard. At the top of the dashboard you will be prompted to fulfil a number of administration tasks to configure your LeaveWizard system (see below screenshot).

Manage Workgroups

You will need to follow this link to define the different departments, teams or workgroups within your organisation. When you follow the link you will see the default workgroup, which is called Default and should be renamed according to your needs (see below screenshot). You can also add new departments accordingly. See our dedicated help blog Managing workgroups for full details.

Add/Edit Team Members

You will need to follow this link to add all of the different team members within the different departments of your organisation. When you follow the link you will see your own details, as the only team member recorded so far (see below screenshot). You will be able to edit your own details, as well as adding and editing the details of other team members. See our dedicated help blog Adding/editing team members for full details.

Setup Approvers

After you have configured work groups and team members you need to consider your approval structure. LeaveWizard has a very flexible approval mechanism and this page is intended to give you an overview of the current approvers within your company and quick links and instructions on how to configure your approvers.

You can read more about how to configure approvers within LeaveWizard in our help articles.

Setup Calendars

You will need to follow this link to set up standard events within your organisation. LeaveWizard provides the ability for an administrator to configure any company events so that employees are aware of these events and can make informed decisions about their holiday requests. This would include days such as bank holidays or Christmas shut down periods where it may not be possible for an employee to book those days off. When you follow the link you will see that no calendars are defined as yet. You will be able to set up new calendars and the standard events that should be included within them (see below screenshots). See our dedicated help blog Setup calendars for full details.

Customise Event Types

You will need to follow this link to customise the leave event types and default allowances available to employees within your organisation. LeaveWizard allows you create as many different company specific event types as you like. There are six different global types of event based upon which you can configure your own company specific events. When you follow the link you will see the global event types (see below screenshot). You will then be able to add new company event types as required. See our dedicated help blog Company event types for full details.

Requesting unpaid leave

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LeaveWizard allows you to request unpaid leave:

- For yourself (all employees can do this)

- On behalf of someone else (only Manager users or Administrator users can do this)

How do I request unpaid leave for myself?

1. Click on the shortcut link at the top right hand side of the screen ‘Request Leave (for me)’ (see below screenshot).

2. A pop up box will appear (see below screenshot) requesting details of the leave event. This includes what type of event it is. Here you will need to select ‘unpaid leave’. You will also need to specify start and end dates for the event which can be selected easily by clicking on the calendar icon, duration of the leave and any further details you wish to submit. When you are ready click ‘Submit’ and your unpaid leave request will be submitted to the person who is designated to approve your leave requests. You will receive an email confirming the submission.

How do I request unpaid leave on behalf of someone else?

1. Click on the shortcut link at the top right hand side of the screen ‘Request Leave (for someone else)’ (see below screenshot).

2. A pop up box will appear requesting the department and name of the employee you want to request leave on behalf of (see screenshot below). It also requests details of the leave event, including what type of event it is. Here you will need to select ‘unpaid leave’. You will also need to specify start and end dates for the event which can be selected easily by clicking on the calendar icon, duration of the leave and any further details you wish to submit. When you are ready click ‘Submit’ and the leave request will be submitted to the person who is designated to approve leave requests for this employee. The person you are requesting leave on behalf of will receive an email confirming the submission and approval of the holiday request.

Please Note: If you have followed the above procedures and you are not offered ‘unpaid leave’ as an event type when attempting to submit your request, this may be because there is no allowance for unpaid leave within your company or the event type has been deactivated. You will need to check this with your administrator.

Specifying someone to cover leave

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LeaveWizard provides you with the ability to specify a person who will be covering your work whilst you are on leave.

How do I specify someone to cover my work whilst I am on leave?

Please follow these steps:

1. Start the leave request process in the normal way, by clicking on the shortcut button ‘Request leave (for me)’ or ‘Request leave (for someone else)’ at the top of the screen. The pop up box that comes up now offers you the option to choose ‘Cover’ from a drop down list (see below screenshot)

2. Submit the leave request and the person you have selected will be sent a message to ensure that they are happy that you have chosen them to cover your leave and asking them to contact their administrator if there is a problem.

How can I get a leave request processed when my designated approver is absent?

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If you have submitted a leave request but the person who usually approves your leave is absent, you can if necessary ask your administrator to process the request. To do this they should follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will then be taken to the Administration screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. In the Reports section please follow the ‘Leave Requests’ link as shown in the screenshot.

3. Here the default view will be a list of all leave requests made within the system.

4. You will need to view a list of all leave requests within the system that are pending. Go to the ‘Select status’ drop down box and select ‘Pending’ (see screenshot above).

5. The screen will automatically refresh and display the leave request listing that you have specified, similar to the screen shot below.

6. Locate the leave request concerned, and click ‘Details’. You will then see the ‘Event Details’ form (see below screenshot) which provides details of the leave request and provides you with the opportunity to approve or reject the request.

This is also the procedure you should follow if an employee needs an approved or pending leave request to be cancelled in the absence of their designated approver.

Alternative Work Patterns

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We know that not all companies are the same, especially when it comes to work patterns. Some companies work five days a week with two days at the weekend, while others work a four day on three day off pattern. LeaveWizard provides you with the ability to change your default company work pattern.

How do I set up an alternative work pattern?

To set up alternative work patterns you need to be an administrator user. Please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will then be taken to the Administration Setup screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. Please follow the ‘Customise Work Patterns’ link as shown in the screenshot.

3. This screen displays the current company work patterns set within your LeaveWizard system. Initially the LeaveWizard default work pattern will be set, which is seven days starting on a Monday, each work pattern displays the days contained within in it, working days are shown in bold and non-working days in normal text. See below screenshot.

4. You create your own work patterns and base them on the default templates that are available however if none of these meet your needs it is possible to create your own fully customised work pattern.

5. Your newly created work pattern will be added to the panel, beneath the current default. You can make this new work pattern the default by clicking ‘Set as default’ (see below screenshot).

Once you have setup your required work patterns you can assign them at Company, Location, Work Group or Employee level. Simply navigate to the relevant pages via the Administration page and select the appropriate work pattern. By default work patterns will be inherited from the next highest level unless explicitly overridden, for example if the default company work pattern is set to 5 work days and 2 non-work days then all locations, work groups and employees will use this work pattern unless specified otherwise. The screen shot below shows an example of changing the work pattern for a department within the company.

N.B. Please note that changing work patterns will have an impact on leave taken by your staff members and the number of days allocated to their leave, when you change work patterns within your company LeaveWizard will automatically recalculate the appropriate values according to the new work pattern working and non-working days.

If you have any further questions about the work pattern functionality then please contact our support team.

My Settings

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This section of the website can be reached by clicking the link in the left hand menu (see below screenshot). It allows you to configure various settings within the LeaveWizard system.

Change password

This area allows you to change your log in password (see below screenshot). Insert your current password, then the password you would like to change it to, then finally confirm this password. Click submit. See our Passwords blog for more detailed help about setting and changing your password.

My settings

In this area you can:

Subscribe to News Letter – ticking this box means that you would like to receive details about LeaveWizard updates and promotions – this will be ticked by default.

Send Email on Leave Request – this option allows you to choose whether to receive email confirmations of your leave requests. If you tick this option an email will be sent to you for your records each time you submit a leave request.

Receive Email Notifications – ticking this box means that you would like to receive any email notifications within LeaveWizard, this would include receiving emails when members of your team request leave for approval.

Select department and time period for the Staff On Leave view - whatever values you select from these drop downs will be used to display the default view in the Staff On Leave area on your Dashboard.

Outlook Integration

In this area you can integrate your Leave Wizard account with your MS Outlook account so that you can view leave information in your LeaveWizard system via your Outlook calendar. For detailed help with this please visit our Outlook Integration help blog.

Bank holiday dates

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For administrators working through the process of configuring company events and company-wide calendars, the following list of bank and public holidays in England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland for the next two years may be useful.

England & Wales	2010	2011
New Year’s Day	1 January	3 January*
Good Friday	2 April	22 April
Easter Monday	5 April	25 April
Early May Bank Holiday	3 May	2 May
Spring Bank Holiday	31 May	30 May
Summer Bank Holiday	30 August	29 August
Christmas Day	27 December*	26 December*
Boxing Day	28 December*	27 December*
*substitute day

Northern Ireland	2010	2011
New Year’s Day	1 January	3 January*
St Patrick’s Day	17 March	17 March
Good Friday	2 April	22 April
Easter Monday	5 April	25 April
Early May Bank Holiday	3 May	2 May
Spring Bank Holiday	31 May	30 May
Battle of the Boyne (Orangemen’s Day)	12 July	12 July
Summer Bank Holiday	30 August	29 August
Christmas Day	27 December*	26 December*
Boxing Day	28 December*	27 December*
*substitute day

There are nine statutory bank holidays across the whole of Scotland. There are also other public or local holidays which can be determined by local authorities, based on local tradition. Since 2007, St Andrew's Day has been an alternative, voluntary public holiday, which can replace an existing local holiday.

Businesses and schools are not necessarily closed on Scottish bank holidays, and the Scottish banks follow the English and Welsh bank holidays for business reasons.

Scotland	2010	2011
New Year’s Day	1 January	3 January*
2 January	4 January*	4 January*
Good Friday	2 April	22 April
Early May Bank Holiday	3 May	2 May
Spring Bank Holiday	31 May	30 May
Summer Bank Holiday	2 August	1 August
St Andrew’s Day	30 November	30 November
Christmas Day	27 December*	26 December*
Boxing Day	28 December*	27 December*
*substitute day

Cancelling leave as an Employee

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If you would like to cancel leave that is either pending approval or has already been approved, you need to follow these steps:

1. Go to the ‘My Leave’ section of your dashboard (see below screenshot).

2. Click on either the ‘Pending’ or the ‘Approved’ tab and you will be able to see any leave that is pending or has been approved. This includes the date the request was submitted, what the leave start and end dates and duration are, and what type of leave it is.

3. For any leave that is yet to be taken, you will see a ‘cancel’ option at the end of the entry (see above screenshot). Simply click this option and an email will be sent to your designated approver advising that the leave has been cancelled.

Cancelling Leave as an Administrator

If you are an administrator and you need to cancel leave on behalf of somebody else then follow these steps:

Go to the Dashboard | Administration | Leave Requests page, here you will see a list of all requests that have been taken by users within your company.
Use the filters to find the relevant event that you wish to cancel.
Click the title of the event, as shown in the image below:

This will take you to the event details page as shown in the following image:
Simply click the cancel button and the event will be cancelled.

Adding newly earned holiday

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If an employee has earned additional holiday, LeaveWizard allows you to amend their holiday allowance to reflect this.

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will then be taken to the Administration Setup screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. Please follow the ‘Configure Allowances’ link as shown in the screenshot.

3. Here you will be able to view a list of employees and their leave allowance for particular leave event types. Select the employee whose leave allowance you would like to amend.

Please note: If an employee does not appear in the list this is because they are currently set up to use the default allowance for each leave type. To amend their allowance you will need to set up a new team member allowance for them. Please see our ‘Configuring allowances’ help blog for more details on this procedure.

4. You should now be able to see the Allowance Details form for the employee. You will need to select which leave event type you are specifying the new allowance for (eg.holiday) and the new number of days in their allowance. See screenshot below.

5. When you’re ready click ‘Submit’ and this will save the changes and will take you back to the allowances overview screen.

I want to book a period of leave that incorporates a bank holiday. How do I stop this day from being deducted from my holiday allowance?

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LeaveWizard provides the ability for an administrator to define ‘company events’ so that employees are aware of these events and can make informed decisions about their holiday requests. This would include days such as bank holidays or Christmas shut down periods.

By default, any company event will not be included in the calculation of an employee’s remaining allowance. Therefore provided that someone with an administrator status has recorded the bank holiday in question as a company event, it will not be deducted from your holiday allowance.

If the date(s) concerned falls within the current month you will be able to see on the ‘This Month’ calendar feature whether the bank holiday has been defined as a company event. Alternatively you can check the Leave Charts which provide you with the option of checking dates that are further in the future. See our separate help blog ‘Leave Charts’ for details about how to use this feature.

For administrators looking for guidance on setting up company events and company-wide calendars, see our dedicated help blog ‘Setup Calendars’.

What to do when an employee leaves

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LeaveWizard does not allow you to delete employees so that you do not accidently lose important holiday information or history. If an employee leaves and you want their details to be removed from the active system you should follow these steps:

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user.

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will be taken to the Administration Setup screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. Please follow the ‘Add/Edit Team Members’ link as shown on the screenshot.

3. Here you will be able to view a list of all team members recorded in the system. Locate the team member whose details you would like to edit and click ‘Edit’ as shown in the screenshot below.

4. Clicking ‘Edit’ will navigate to the Team Member Details form which will allow you to modify the team member’s details – see the screenshot below.

5. You have the option to select whether the team member ‘Is Locked Out’ – this means that the employee will be unable to log into the website. You may want to select this if the employee has recently left but you still want to see their details on the leave charts and lists. If you do not want the employee’s details to appear on any charts and lists, you should un-tick the ‘Is Active’ box. This will also prevent the former employee from logging into the website.

6. Once you are ready click Submit and your changes will be saved. If you would like to navigate without saving click another link on the page.

Approving leave

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Manager and administrator users have the ability to approve leave in two ways:

1. Through the email that they receive in their inbox (either their LeaveWizard inbox or their external email inbox) notifying them of the request.

2. Through their dedicated approvals section.

Approving via email

1. To view a specific leave request email, click on the subject line. In addition to the email message you will be provided with four options (see below screenshot):

View my approvals list

This takes you to the approvals section where you can view this approval request along with any other pending requests that you have. From this point you can approve or reject the request.

Approve this event

This approves the request and sends a confirmation email.

Reject this event

This rejects the request and sends a confirmation email.

See who is on leave at the same time

This brings up the leave charts pop up so you can see who else is on leave at the same time as this request.

Approving via approvals section

1. You can instantly approve or reject a request via this section of the dashboard by highlighting the request and clicking the relevant button (see below screenshot).

2. To view a request in more detail, click on the title and you will be provided with the event title, any further details that have been submitted by the employee, start date and duration (see below screenshot). You can follow a link to view who is on leave at the same time, and then choose to approve or reject the request. If you wish to add a note when performing a leave request approval, rejection or cancellation (for example to explain the reason why a leave request has been rejected), you can include details in the ‘Approval Notes’ text box. The team member that requested the leave will receive these details in their email notification.

How do I check whether anyone else has booked leave on the day I want to request?

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There are two ways you can quickly check whether anyone else has booked leave on a date that you want to book.

1. If the date you want to check falls within the next two weeks, you can simply check the ‘Staff on leave’ section of your dashboard. This is the last section of the dashboard. Select your department (if necessary) from the first drop down menu, and the time frame that the date falls within (today, tomorrow, one week, two weeks) from the second drop down menu. If a member of staff has leave booked on the date in question, you will be able to see their name, the duration of their leave, its start and end dates, and what type of leave it is.

2. To view dates that are more than two weeks away, you can click on the shortcut link at the top right hand side of the screen ‘Leave Charts’ (see below screenshot).

There are a number of different chart formats to choose from. The default screen here will be ‘Leave Chart by Month’ which shows you an overview of all leave events recorded in the current month (see below screenshot). You can view leave charts for any other month by clicking on the relevant tab, and this can be filtered by department and/or year using the ‘Department’ and ‘Year’ drop down menus.

To view ‘Leave Chart By Date Range’ click on the tab highlighted in the screenshot below. This chart shows you an overview of all leave events recorded within a specified date range. You can set the date range easily by clicking on the calendar icons and then clicking ‘Submit’. You can also filter by department on this screen by selecting from the ‘Department’ drop down menu.

The Dashboard

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The dashboard is like the home page for your LeaveWizard system. It consists of an inbox, an approvals area (only for manager or administrator users) my leave and staff on leave.

Inbox

1. The dashboard always displays the latest two email messages plus any additional unread messages. To view all emails click on the ‘Inbox’ header or the link ‘more...’ at the end of the section.

2. When you have viewed an email (or without viewing it if you wish) you can tick in the box beside the entry and mark it as read, which removes it from the dashboard but keeps it in the inbox (see below screenshot). You can also mark it as unread (so it remains on the dashboard) or delete it from the system.

3. To view a specific email, click on the subject line. For manager and administrator users in receipt of a leave request email; in addition to the email message you will be provided with four options (see below screenshot):

View my approvals list

This takes you to the approvals section where you can view this approval request along with any other pending requests that you have. From this point you can approve or reject the request.

Approve this event

This approves the request and sends a confirmation email.

Reject this event

This rejects the request and sends a confirmation email.

See who is on leave at the same time

This brings up the leave charts pop up so you can see who else is on leave at the same time as this request.

Approvals

The approvals area is a feature of the dashboard for manager and administrator users only.

1. The dashboard always displays any pending approvals. If there are no pending approvals, the section does not appear on the dashboard, but can be reached via the side menu on the left of the screen. You can instantly approve or reject a request via the dashboard by highlighting the request and clicking the relevant button (see below screenshot).

My Leave

This section of the dashboard allows you to view your own personal leave summary.

1. You can instantly see leave that is pending approval or has been approved. This includes the date the request was submitted or the absence recorded, what the leave start and end dates and duration are, and what type of leave it is. You can also see a snapshot summary of your leave and sickness allowance for the year: how many days are in your allowance and how many of these are remaining.

2. To view a complete leave summary click on the ‘My Leave’ header. In addition to leave pending, approved and leave allowance, this allows you to view lists of leave rejected, expired and cancelled. This includes the date the request was submitted, what the leave start and end dates and duration were, and what type of leave it was.

Staff On Leave

This section of the dashboard provides an overview of staff leave today, tomorrow or over the next week or two weeks. This can be customised by all departments or a particular one by selecting from the drop down menus (as shown in the below screenshot).

This Month

The ‘This Month’ feature of the dashboard provides an overview of all your leave and other company events for the current month, for quick and easy reference.

Registering and Logging In/Out

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Registering and activating your LeaveWizard account takes just one minute. Once you are registered to use the system you will have a username and password that you will need to be able to log in to the system.

How do I register?

You can get to the registration page by following a number of links from the home page. There is a link in the top right hand corner of the page; a shortcut button ‘Register Now’ in the main body of the page; or there is also a link ‘Register in 1 Minute’ next to the stopwatch icon on the right hand side of the page.

1. Once you reach the registration page you will need to fill in a details form shown in the screenshot below. As well as your own and your company name, you will need to provide an email address which will form your username for logging into and using the system in the future. In addition to this you will need to specify a password which you will also need for logging in.

You will need to indicate whether you want to sign up to receive LeaveWizard news and promotions, and confirm that you have read and agree with the LeaveWizard terms and conditions. You will also need to enter an authentication code shown on the form to confirm that you are a real person.

2. Once you have completed the details form, click ‘Register’ and your LeaveWizard account will be instantly created. A confirmation email will be sent to the email address you specified in the registration form. The email will contain an authentication link which you will need to click on to complete the registration process. You are now a registered user of LeaveWizard!

Logging in and out

1. To log in to LeaveWizard, navigate to the log in page which can be reached via the link at the top right hand corner of the home page.

2. The Log In page is shown in the screenshot below. Insert your username and password and click ‘sign in’. If you don’t want to keep reinserting your username tick the ‘remember me’ box and your username will be completed automatically when you come to the log in page.

3. If you have forgotten your password, click the link and follow the instructions to create a new one. See separate help blog ‘Passwords’ for more help in this area.

Whenever you use LeaveWizard, your username and status will be displayed in the top right hand corner of the screen. You also click here when you want to log out.

Problems with activating accounts

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If a new user is having problems activating their account, there may be a number of reasons for this:

Didn’t receive the activation email
Can’t log in (problems with username/password)
Activation link doesn’t work

I am unable to activate my account – I didn’t receive the activation email

If you are unable to activate your account because you didn’t receive the activation email that is sent to a user upon registering with LeaveWizard, this may be because your computer is protected by a firewall or mail filter which is stopping messages from LeaveWizard from coming through. You may need to speak to your network administrator or IT support desk about this - we will be happy to provide any details they may require to resolve the issue.

In the meantime, you can ask someone with an administrator status to activate your account on your behalf. To do this they will need to follow a number of steps:

1. First you must be sure that the email account (user name) is correct. Then you need to navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar, then click ‘Add/Edit Team Members’. This will take you to the list of already recorded team members. Locate the team member who you would like to activate and click ‘Edit’ as shown in the screenshot below.

2. Clicking ‘Edit’ will navigate to the Team Member Details form which will allow you to modify the team member’s details – see the screenshot below.

3. Select the ‘Is Active’ tick box and when you are ready click Submit. This will activate the team member’s account without them needing to follow the link from the activation email.

I am unable to activate my account – I can’t log in

This may be because your username (this is your email address) has been registered incorrectly or because you have entered your password incorrectly.

Problems with username

If you can’t log in because your username has been registered incorrectly, you will need to ask someone with an administrator status to correct it. To do this they will need to follow a number of steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar, then click ‘Add/Edit Team Members’. This will take you to the list of already recorded team members. Locate the team member whose username/email you would like to correct and click ‘Edit’ as shown in the screenshot below.

2. Clicking ‘Edit’ will navigate to the Team Member Details form which will allow you to modify the team member’s details – see the screenshot below.

3. Insert the correct email address and when you are ready click Submit. This will correct the team member’s email/username and should allow them to log in successfully.

Problems with password

If you can’t log in because you have forgotten your password you can follow the forgotten password link to recover your password. See our ‘passwords’ help blog for full details on this.

I am unable to activate my account – the activation link doesn’t work

If you are unable to activate your account because the activation link you have been sent doesn’t work this may be because it has expired (as it is only valid for a short time). You will need to ask someone with an administrator status to resend the activation email. To do this they will need to follow a number of steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar, then click ‘Add/Edit Team Members’. This will take you to the list of already recorded team members. Locate the team member who you would like to resend the activation email to and click ‘Edit’ as shown in the screenshot below.

2. Clicking ‘Edit’ will navigate to the Team Member Details form as well as a section entitled ‘Team Member Actions’ - see the screenshot below. This provides you with a list of any relevant actions there may be for this team member, including the option to resend the user’s welcome message (this is the activation email).

Adding/editing team members

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How do I add a new team member?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will be taken to the Administration Setup screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. Please follow the ‘Add/Edit Team Members’ link as shown on the screenshot.

3. Here you will be able to view a list of all team members recorded in the system. If you have just opened your account then your name will be the only one listed as you are automatically added as a member during the company registration process.

4. Click on ‘New Team Member’, and you should now be able to see the Team Member Details form which lets you add a new team member. See screenshot below.

5. As you can see on the screenshot you will need to specify the new team member’s full name, email address, department and role, and specify who will approve their leave requests.

6. When you come to the ‘approvers’ line highlighted in the screenshot you can create any number of approvers for different or multiple leave types using the ‘Add’ option.

7. You then have the option to select whether the new team member ‘Is Locked Out’ – this means that the employee will be unable to log into the website – you may want to do this if the employee has recently left but you still want to see their details on the leave charts and lists.

8. LeaveWizard does not allow you to delete employees so that you do not accidently lose important holiday information or history. Therefore you also need to specify whether a team member ‘Is Active.’ Unticking this option will mean that the employee’s details will not appear on any charts and lists.

9. Once you click ‘submit’ an email will be sent to the specified email address welcoming the new user and providing them with their account and login details. You can enter customised text for this email. Here is sample text for the full email they will be sent:

“Hello, welcome to your new LeaveWizard account! Your account details are below. Please make sure that you change your temporary password when you login for the first time.

Bob Parker has created you an account at Leave Wizard - Easy Leave Management for managing your holiday requests.

Your user name has been setup as: sample@googlemail.com, but we need you to set your password. Please click the following link: Link.”

10. Once you are ready click ‘Submit’ and the new team member details will be saved. If you would like to navigate without saving click another link on the page.

How do I edit an existing team member’s details?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar, then click ‘Add/Edit Team Members’. This will take you to the list of already recorded team members. Locate the team member whose details you would like to edit and click ‘Edit’ as shown in the screenshot below.

2. Clicking ‘Edit’ will navigate to the Team Member Details form which will allow you to modify the team member’s details – see the screenshot below.

3. Once you are ready click Submit and your changes will be saved. If you would like to navigate without saving click another link on the page.

4. When you click to edit a team member’s details, you will also see a section entitled ‘Team Member Actions’ (see below screenshot). This provides you with a list of any relevant actions there may be for this team member. For example if you performed a bulk upload and opted not to send a bulk welcome email to all employees, you can resend the welcome email to individuals using this function.

Leave Charts

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LeaveWizard allows you to view leave information in a number of different chart formats.

1. Click on the shortcut link at the top right hand side of the screen ‘Leave Charts’ (see below screenshot).

2. The default screen here will be ‘Leave Chart by Month’ which shows you an overview of all leave events recorded in the current month (see below screenshot). You can view leave charts for any other month by clicking on the relevant tab, and this can be filtered by department and/or year using the ‘Department’ and ‘Year’ drop down menus.

3. To view ‘Leave Chart By Date Range’ click on the tab highlighted in the screenshot below. This chart shows you an overview of all leave events recorded within a specified date range. You can set the date range easily by clicking on the calendar icons and then clicking ‘Submit’. You can also filter by department on this screen by selecting from the ‘Department’ drop down menu.

4. To view ‘My Leave By Year’ click on the upper tab highlighted in the screenshot below. This chart shows you an overview of all your own personal leave events recorded within this leave year.

Configuring settings

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LeaveWizard provides you with a number of company-wide settings that you can configure. These include the year start day, the year start month and default maximum staff on leave for all departments (this can be overridden at department level). The system also allows you to set designated team leads as the default approver for their teams.

How do I set/change my company wide settings?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will then be taken to the Administration Setup screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. Please follow the ‘Settings’ link as shown in the screenshot.

3. You will then see the Company Details form which shows your current stored settings. As you can see from the screenshot below this includes company name (which cannot be altered), the year start day, the year start month, default maximum staff on leave for all departments, and whether team leads are set as the default approvers for their teams. When you’re ready click ‘Submit’ and this will store your settings/save any changes.

Requesting leave

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LeaveWizard allows you to request leave:

- For yourself (all employees can do this)

- On behalf of someone else (only Manager users or Administrator users can do this)

How do I request leave for myself?

1. Click on the shortcut link at the top right hand side of the screen ‘Request Leave (for me)’ (see below screenshot).

2. A pop up box will appear (see below screenshot) requesting details of the leave event: the title of the event for ease of reference, what type of event it is (ie. Holiday), start and end dates for the event which can be selected easily by clicking on the calendar icon, duration of the leave and any further details you wish to submit. When you are ready click ‘Submit’ and your leave request will be submitted to the person who is designated to approve your leave requests (both to their LeaveWizard inbox and their external email inbox). You will receive an email confirming the submission.

How do I request leave on behalf of someone else?

First you need to be logged in as a manager or administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Click on the shortcut link at the top right hand side of the screen ‘Request Leave (for someone else)’ (see below screenshot).

2. A pop up box will appear requesting the department and name of the employee you want to request leave on behalf of (see screenshot below). It also requests details of the leave event: the title of the event for ease of reference, what type of event it is (ie. Holiday), start and end dates for the event which can be selected easily by clicking on the calendar icon, duration of the leave and any further details you wish to submit. When you are ready click ‘Submit’ and the leave request will be submitted to the person who is designated to approve leave requests for this employee (both to their LeaveWizard inbox and their external email inbox). The person you are requesting leave on behalf of will receive an email confirming the submission and approval of the holiday request.

Reporting: generating leave reports and leave request listings

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LeaveWizard allows you to generate leave reports for specified departments or company event types. You can also view a list of all leave requests made by users within the system. You are provided with the option to view all requests or only those that are pending, approved, cancelled, rejected or expired.

How do I generate a leave report for a specific department?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will then be taken to the Administration screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. In the Reports section please follow the ‘Leave Report’ link as shown in the screenshot.

3. Here the default view will be a list of all employees who have leave booked in the current month: their department, the leave event type, its start date and duration. See screenshot below.

4. To view a report for a specific department, select the department from the drop down list as shown in the below screenshot, and then select the period of time you want the report to cover by setting the start and end dates using the calendar pop ups.

5. The screen will automatically refresh and display the leave report, similar to the screen shot below.

How do I generate a leave report for a particular company event type?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar, then click ‘Leave Report’ in the Reports section. This will take you to the default Leave Report screen.

2. To view a report for a company event type, select an event type from the drop down menu as shown in the screenshot below, and then select the period of time you want the report to cover by setting the start and end dates using the calendar pop ups.

3. The screen will automatically refresh and display the leave report, similar to the screenshot below.

How do I generate a list of all leave requests made by users?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

3. Here the default view will be a list of all leave requests made within the system. If you have just opened your account then there will be no listings.

4. To view a list of all leave requests within the system that are pending, go to the ‘Select status’ drop down box and select ‘Pending’ (see screenshot above). Other options here include requests that are approved, cancelled, rejected or expired.

5. The screen will automatically refresh and display the leave request listing that you have specified, similar to the screenshot below.

Recording absence

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How do I record absence?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator or manager user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Click on the shortcut link at the top middle of the screen ‘Record Absence’ (see below screenshot).

2. A pop up box will appear (see below screenshot) requesting the department and name of the absent employee, and details of the absence: title (for ease of reference), type of leave event (for which you need to select ‘sickness’), start and end dates for the absence which can be selected easily by clicking on the calendar icon, duration of the absence and any further details you wish to submit. When you are ready click ‘Submit’ and the absence record is added to the employee’s leave records.

If you try to record an absence and the pop up box states that an event already exists, this may be because the staff member in question already has approved leave on that day.

Managing workgroups

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LeaveWizard allows you to customise your workgroups so that they reflect the different departments in your organisation.

How do I create a new department?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will then be taken to the Administration Setup screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. Please follow the ‘Manage Workgroups’ link as shown on the screenshot.

3. Here you will be able to view the list of Workgroups already set up. If you have just opened your account then you will see the default workgroup, which is called Default and should be renamed according to your needs.

4. Click ‘New Department’. You should now be able to see the Department Details form which lets you add a new department. See screenshot below.

5. As you can see on the screenshot you will need to specify the name of the department, the type of department (the options you have to choose from here are team, department or system). You then set the department head from the drop down list and you can then specify the maximum number of people who can be on leave from this department at any one time. You also have the option here to mark a department as inactive by unticking the last box (if for example a company restructure meant the department didn’t exist anymore.)

6. When you’re ready click ‘Submit’ and the department will be added to the list in the Workgroups area.

How do I edit an existing department?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

2. Clicking ‘Edit’ will navigate to the Department Details form which will allow you to modify the Department’s details – see the screenshot below.

3. The Department Details form also provides you with a list of all the team members in this department, providing a quick link through to their details if there is anything you need to change here. If you have changed the name of the department and you want to reassign all the team members of the department to the new name, you can select this from the ‘Reassign All to Workgroup’ option at the end of the page and submit. This saves you having to go through the details of each different team member and reassigning their department.

4. It is also possible to move all of the employees in one department to another department using the same function. Simply selecting a department from the ‘Reassign All to Workgroup’ drop down list and clicking the submit button will reassign each employee in the current department to the selected department.

5. Once you are ready click ‘Submit’ and your changes will be saved. If you would like to navigate without saving click another link on the page.

Configuring allowances

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LeaveWizard allows you to configure leave allowances for specific employees including the number of days to carry over from this years allowance and the number of days carried over from last year’s allowance.

How do I specify an allowance?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

From the main dashboard click the “Administration” link, this will take you to the main administration console.
Next, click the “Configure Allowances” link which will take you to a page which displays all of the currently configured allowances.
Here you will be able to view a list of employees and their leave allowance for particular leave event types. To edit and employee’s allowance simply click the “Pencil” icon highlighted in red in the screen shot below, this will put the allowance into edit mode and will allow you set up the user’s allowance your selected leave year.

Once you are happy with the allowance you have configured simply click the “tick” icon or if you wish to cancel click the “cross” icon (highlighted in blue).

Performing a bulk upload

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LeaveWizard allows you to upload many team member or company event details all at once. This is ideal when you are first configuring your LeaveWizard account and you need to upload all existing staff and leave details.

How do I perform a bulk upload?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will then be taken to the Administration Setup screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. In the Optional section, please follow the ‘Bulk Upload’ link as shown in the screenshot.

3. Here you will be able to view the below Bulk Upload default screen. As you can see from the screenshot you will be asked to select the relevant* file from your computer to upload. Once you have uploaded your file, individual emails will be sent to all the people listed in the file. The email will contain their account and login details. You can customise the text for the welcome email but you also have the option here to disable the email function so that emails aren’t sent out. (See ‘Adding/Editing Team Members’ help document for details about how to send individual welcome emails to employees after performing a bulk upload).

4. *You can download a sample file that shows you what type of file you need and what format the data should follow. You may find it easiest to save the sample file, rename it and replace the data contained in it with your own.

5. You can perform a bulk upload of company event data following exactly the same process as above but through the Events section of the Bulk Upload screen (see screenshot below).

Company Event Types

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Name	Description	Is Company	Requires Approval	Is Paid	Is Time Off	Is Sickness	Is Allowanced
Company leave	Typical events of this type would be a Christmas shut down period or any other time that the company may shut down and therefore is a compulsory holiday – this event type cannot be booked by employees	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Company event	This might be something like a conference or event where it is useful for employees of the company to know that the event is taking place but this does not prevent them from taking holiday on those dates – this event type cannot be booked by employees	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Holiday	The standard type of event used for employees to book holiday, this event type requires approval	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Sickness	The standard type of event used for employees to book sickness or any other kind of absence that is not holiday	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Unpaid leave	This event type can be requested by employees and approved by managers when they may have run out of regular holiday allowance	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes
Event	Use this event type for things like “Working from home” or “Meeting” or any other type of event that does not require approval and does not have a related allowance	No	No	No	No	No	No

How do I create my own company event types?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will then be taken to the Administration Setup screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. Please follow the ‘Customise Event Types’ link as shown in the screenshot.

3. Here you will be able to view the list of event types already recorded. If you have just opened your account then you will see the global event types, similar to the image below. Let’s now add a new type.

4. Click ‘New Company Event Type’. You should now be able to see the Event Type Details form which lets you create your customised event type. See screenshot below.

5. As you can see on the screenshot you will need to specify name, choose type*, enter payment percent (which will be 100% except for leave types where employees are paid a percentage of their wage, such as maternity leave) and default allowance (which allows you to specify how many days of this company event type each employee should receive per year). You will also need to choose a colour that will be used when displaying events of this type on leave charts or reports. When you’re ready click ‘Submit’ and this will save the changes and will take you back to the list of company event types.

*As detailed at the beginning of this section, each company event type that you set up will also need to be allocated to one of the LeaveWizard global ‘types’. This allows the system to record whether the new company event type you are creating will be paid time off, whether it will remain bookable time for employees or is public holiday and so on. You may find the table at the start of this section helpful in deciding which global type to assign to your new company event type.

How do I edit existing company event types?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar, then click ‘Customise Event Types’. This will take you to the list of already defined event types. Locate the entry you would like to edit and click ‘Edit’ as shown in the screenshot below.

2. Clicking ‘Edit’ will navigate to the Event Type Details page which will allow you to modify any of the company event type properties – see the screenshot below.

3. Once you are ready click ‘Submit’ and your changes will be saved. If you would like to navigate without saving either click Cancel or click another link on the page.

Setting up approvers in LeaveWizard

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The LeaveWizard application provides users with a staff holiday management system that includes an approval workflow which means that when an employee submits a leave request, any assigned approvers are notified and are given the option to either approve or reject the request.

By default, LeaveWizard assumes that no approvers will be used and therefore all leave requests will be approved automatically, however if a user has an approver assigned to them then any leave requests will be pending until the assigned approver approves or rejects the leave.

How do I assign approvers?

There are two ways to assign approvers to employees:

- Assign a team leader to the employee’s department or team

This setting is most useful when you have many departments with many users and generally the department head is responsible for approving their own team members leave.

- Directly assign an approver to the employee

This approach is more useful when somebody outside of the employee’s team is responsible for any leave approvals.

How do I assign a team leader to an employee’s department or team?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. When you first create a LeaveWizard account this is configured by default. To view the default settings navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will then be taken to the Administration Setup screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. Please follow the ‘Settings’ link as shown in the screenshot.

3. You will then see the Company Details form which shows your current stored settings. As you can see from the screenshot below this includes the option to set the Team Lead as Default Approver.

4. Click to enable this setting. You then need to assign a team leader to the department or team that the employee belongs to. Navigate to the ‘Administration’ dashboard and follow the link to ‘Manage workgroups’ (see below screenshot).

5. Select the department that the employee belongs to (see screenshot below) and this will take you to the Department Details form.

6. In the Department Details form (see screenshot below) select the manager or administrator that is the department head, click the ‘Submit’ button and the settings will be saved. The next time that any employee within the configured department applies for leave, the specified department head will receive an email notification stating that the leave request needs to be approved.

How do I directly assign an approver to an employee?

The alternative way to assign an approver to an employee is to directly assign a manager or administrator as an approver. This approach is more useful when somebody outside of the employee’s team is responsible for any leave approvals.

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the ‘Administration’ dashboard and select Add/Edit Team Members (see below screenshot).

2. Select the team member you want to assign an approver to (see below screenshot).

3. In the Team Member Details form, select the employee (approver) that you wish to assign the team member to (see below screenshot).

4. When you set the approvers for a specific team member you can create any number of approvers for different or multiple leave types using the ‘Add’ option. You can use this function to assign a different approver for different company event types. For example one manager may need to approve an employee’s holiday requests while another records their sickness absence. Select the manager’s name and the company event type from the drop down lists highlighted in the above screenshot, then click ‘add’. You should then see the assigned approver beneath the drop down lists with the company event type that they can approve in brackets.

5. To remove a directly assigned approver simply click the ‘Remove’ button next to the approver that you wish to remove.

6. Finally click the ‘Submit’ button to save any changes you have made.

Setting up calendars and adding company events

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LeaveWizard provides the ability for an administrator to configure any company events so that employees are aware of these events and can make informed decisions about their holiday requests, this would include days such as bank holidays or Christmas shut down periods where it may not be possible for an employee to book those days off.

How do I set up standard events and company-wide calendars?

First you need to be logged in as an administrator user. Then please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘Administration’ link from the left sidebar and then choosing ‘Setup Calendars’ from the administration dashboard, as shown in the screen shot below.

2. You will now see a list of all currently available calendars – by default this list will be empty. Click the ‘New Calendar’ link and you will be presented with the below Calendar Details screen.

3. The Calendar Details screen allows you to give the calendar a name and a description and then also define the events that should be included in the calendar.

4. It is also possible to add a group of events from a template of existing events using the template events drop down list. This provides a list of all available calendar templates, which is currently limited to UK public holidays for 2009/10 and 11 but we shall be adding new templates as and when required. Simply select the calendar template you wish to apply the events from and then select the “Add Template Events” button.

By default, any company event will not be included in the calculation of an employee’s remaining allowance so if an employee accidently includes an existing company event in their holiday booking, the value will not be included in their remaining allowance calculation.

Resetting your password with LeaveWizard

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LeaveWizard uses secure passwords which means that they are encrypted and it is not possible for anybody other than the account holder to see them, even our support staff are unable to see passwords. What this means is that you can only change your password if you are logged into the system already. If you have forgotten your password you will need to make a password reset request. These two steps are described below.

Changing your password when logged in

1. Navigate to the correct page by following the ‘My Settings’ link from the left sidebar as shown in the screenshot below.

2. You will then be taken to the User Preferences screen and you should see a similar view to the one below. Where prompted, simply enter your old password, the new password you wish to change it to and then re-confirm the password.

Resetting a forgotten password

1. Go to the login screen, and click the "Forgotten your password?" link (shown below).

2. This will take you to the forgotten password page (see screenshot below) where you will be prompted to enter your user name (this is the email address you registered with) and click the submit button. An email containing an authentication link will be sent to the specified email address if it is a valid account.

3. Simply follow the instructions in the email and click the authorisation link which will take you to the reset forgotten password page (see screenshot below). This allows you to enter a new password, once you have confirmed your new password you will be redirected to the login page where you can now log in to LeaveWizard.

If you have any problems whilst trying to change or reset your password then please do not hesitate to contact us at support@leavewizard.com where one of our support team will be able to help you.