Availability settings

To ensure you have a complete picture of your team's capacity when planning projects and distributing work, you must define your team's working hours in the Availability settings, accessible under Settings > Work and projects > Availability. Scoro uses these settings to calculate availability across the Calendar and Planner views, as well as the utilization report.

By default, Scoro assumes a standard work week of 8 hours per day, 5 days a week. Any new user added to your site is automatically assigned to this schedule. If this reflects your business, you don't need to change anything in the Availability settings. However, if you have part-time employees, seasonal shifts, or specific holiday requirements, you will need to set up custom availability rules.

The platform will consider the set working hours when calculating team members' availability in the Calendar, Planner, and Utilization report.

This article shows how to set your team's general availability schedules and company-wide holidays and covers options for managing availability during short-term absences like time-off.

1. Permissions related to availability settings

Access to the availability settings page is controlled by permission sets.

To enable access to the Availability settings for a permission set:

1. Go to Settings > Administration > Permission sets.
2. Click on Modules and actions button for the permission set you want to modify.
   
3. Scroll down to the Settings section, tick the checkbox for the Modify work and projects settings permission, and click Save.
   

Once the permission is granted, users with this particular permission set will be able to access the Availability settings under Settings > Work and projects > Availability.

2. Setting up new availability rules and schedules

To update your team's schedules or create new availability rules, go to Settings > Work and projects > Availability.

To ensure you're aware of all the availability rules already in place for your organization, filter the view to All dates.

To create a new schedule or override the current one:

1. We recommend duplicating an existing rule – simply click on an existing availability rule on the list, then click the Duplicate button.
   
   Alternatively, you can click the + New button to create a new availability rule from scratch.
   
2. Select the start date in the From field to determine when the new availability rule should take effect.
3. Enter the availability in the fields next to the individual users to change individual working hours, or the fields next to the user group to update availability for a group of employees at once.
4. Set the end date depending on whether the availability rule you're creating will be permanent or temporary:
   • If you're creating an availability rule to override the existing schedule for the foreseeable future, leave the Indefinite checkbox ticked. Once saved, the new rota will be in effect from the selected start date onwards.
     
   • If you're creating a temporary availability rule, untick the Indefinite checkbox and select the end date in the Until field until which the temporary schedule is in effect. 
     
5. If your schedule requires your team to work during the weekend or holidays, tick the checkbox for the respective columns and enter the available hours for individual users or user groups as needed.
   
   Holiday hours in the Availability settings will apply to the days you've set up in Scoro's holiday schedule. Review these settings to ensure that reduced hours are taken into consideration on all holidays that fall within your new schedule.
   
6. Once you've set the new availability rule as needed, click Save.

3. Managing vacations and time off

While the Availability settings define your team's general capacity, specific absences like vacations or sick leave can be handled by various Scoro features depending on your Scoro package:

• Growth, Performance, Enterprise, as well as legacy Standard, Pro, and Ultimate plans: Users can use the dedicated Time-off feature to create time-off entries, which automatically update their availability globally across Scoro.
• Core plan, as well as the legacy Essential plan: We recommend managing vacations using projects. This ensures that managers can still see and account for time off when distributing work.

Learn more about managing vacations in Scoro.

4. Preventing gaps in your schedule

Whenever you introduce a temporary schedule in Scoro, it will split your indefinite rule in two. Your regular schedule will continue until the selected start date of the temporary rota. Once the temporary schedule expires, the team's availability will automatically return to your indefinite rule. 

We recommend reviewing the start and end dates outlined in the Availability settings regularly to ensure there are no gaps in your schedule.

Now that you've set up working hours for your team members, you're all set for using the Calendar, Planner and Utilization report to plan work and delegate tasks.