Configuring the Schedule

We’ve mentioned Working Hours, Days Off, Special Days, and Office Hours, and we know it is all starting to blend together so let’s go over the most important segments of creating a working schedule in Trafft.

Let’s start breaking this down.

Availability of Time Slots (Services)

The availability of services is determined by the Working Hours, Days Off, and Special Days of your employees. If the employees work from Mon – Fri, from 09:00 – 17:00, all services the employees are assigned to will be able to provide appointments during those times, dependent on the duration of each service.

You can, of course, configure different service availability based on employee’s working hours by adding working periods so, for example, if an employee is supposed to cover Service 1 from 09:00 – 12:00, but Service 2 from 13:00 – 15:00, you need to create 2 working periods in the employee’s profile (under Working Hours) and manually select the services you want to offer during the day.

Special Days overwrite regular working hours, so if your employee is working from 09:00 – 17:00, you can create a special date for a certain date or date range, and override those hours.

Days Off block entire days for the employee. They can be used for vacations or sick leaves, for example.

Working Hours

Working Hours are related to employees. Each employee can be edited, and each employee can have unique working hours, so (for example) John works from 09:00 – 17:00, while Mark works from 12:00 – 20:00.

They are applied to weekdays (Mon-Sun) and they will be repeated every week.

In the screenshot above, the employee works on the Core HIIT service from 09:00 – 12:00, at the Brooklyn location. Then, there’s a 1-hour gap (the time it takes the employee to reach the other location) and the next period starts at 13:00 and ends at 15:00, at the Home Office location.

This employee’s Default Location (configured in the “Employee Info” tab, in the employee’s profile) is set to “Home Office”, so the Default Location is left for the 3rd period. Also, during the last 2 hours (15:00 – 17:00) of the employee’s shift, this employee is supposed to cover all services (s)he’s assigned to in the “Assigned Services” tab, so this period has not been modified when “Location” and “Services” are concerned – only the working hours during this period were ammended.

As mentioned above, the Working Hours will be repeated every week, so if we take the screenshot above as an example, every Monday in the employee’s schedule will be configured like this.

It is important to note that defining services and/or locations in Working Hours Periods cannot be changed if you assign new/different services in the employee’s Assigned Services tab. Meaning, if you defined the “Core HIIT” service, the working period will only cover this service. If you assign a new service to the employee, and it should be covered along with “Core HIIT”, it needs to be added in the Working Hours period.

Additionally – if you want the employee to cover all assigned services, you should not be selecting services while creating working hours periods – leaving the selection blank will always use All Assigned Services selected, so you will be able to add new services and they’ll automatically be added to the Working Hours.

Special Days

Say there is a seminar your employee needs to attend from November 6th – November 10th. During this time, the employee will be available for booking but only until noon.

Without having to wait for this date, and risk having an appointment booked in advance, you can enable the Special Days feature, and then edit the employee’s profile. A new tab (which is enabled automatically during your free trial) will appear, and you’ll be able to configure Special Days during this period.

When you click on “+ Add Special Day” a new popup will appear where you can select a range of dates, or a single date.

Once a range is selected, you need to define the Start Time and the End Time and choose whether this will apply to all assigned services and the default location, or only hand-selected services and certain location(s).

Using the example above, we’ll have this special day cover only the “Core HIIT” service, and only the Brooklyn location. Here, you’re selecting the dates and the times when the employee will work, so all gaps in the schedule will not be covered during the Special Days.

Once you select the date(s), the times, the service(s), and the location(s), you need to click on Add Period but please note that this does not complete the Special Days creation process. It simply adds the period, and after it’s added, the date/time form will appear again while the period you just added will be minimized, so you can edit it afterward if you need to.

Once you’re done adding the periods (or if the one you’ve added is enough), you need to click on the “Add Special Day” button in the bottom right but don’t forget to click on the “Save Changes” button that pops up in the bottom middle of the screen in order to save it.

Days Off

The Days Off will overwrite Working Hours and Special Days, and they are to be used when your employees aren’t supposed to work at all.

For example, if the employee has a vacation scheduled from August 14th – August 25th, you need to access the Days Off section in the Employee’s Profile and click on “+ Add Day Off“. In there, enter the name of the event (“Vacation 2023”, for example), and either select a range of dates or double-click to select a single date.

There’s also a slider that allows you to repeat the day off every year. If your company provides employees with days off for their birthdays (for example), you can select a single date and tick the “Repeat this day off yearly” slider, so you won’t have to worry about it in the future.

Clicking the “Add Day Off” in the bottom right corner of the popup adds the special day, but don’t forget to click on the “Save Changes” button that pops up in the bottom middle of the screen in order to save it.

Calendar Integrations

The last thing that affects your employees’ schedules is the Calendar integrations:

• Google Calendar Integration;
• Outlook Calendar Integration;
• iCal Calendar Integration.

Each of these integrations has the “Remove SPECIFIC calendar busy slots” option in the configuration of each calendar integration.

Once you connect your employees to their calendars, this option looks for existing busy slots in the connected calendars and removes availability during these events in the employee’s schedule.

For example, if your employee works from 09:00 – 12:00, and has no appointments booked, no special days or days off configured, but has a busy event from 10:00 – 12:00 created in the Google Calendar (s)he’s connected to – this time will be blocked for booking in Trafft if the aforementioned option is enabled.

These events can be seen in the Calendar section in Trafft, but at this time, you’re only able to see the event, not the actual date and the time of the event.