Creating and managing staff availability

With JRNI, staff availability is determined by shifts and shift patterns created on each staff member’s profile. Once set up, this availability will primarily determine when staff are bookable on the customer journey, including the staff admin journey within JRNI Studio.

Other configurations that can impact staff availability:

• Making staff continuously available: staff can be made to appear available regardless of any existing bookings / conflicts.
• Making staff unavailable: staff shift and shift patterns can be altered at any time, time can be blocked out on their calendar, and they can also be disabled for any period of time.
• Overriding scheduled availability: staff members creating bookings via the Calendar in Studio can create bookings outside of working hours. Both staff members and Call Center users can also override minimum / maximum advance booking or cancellation settings, and create bookings in the past.

Creating shift patterns

Manage individual staff member work times in the Schedule tab via the staff profile. Here, you can set up availability patterns according to staff working hours. 

Creating and managing shifts can be done at either the Parent (HQ) or Child (location/branch) level, and will take global effect across any other locations the staff member is assigned to. Visit our guide to learn more about setting up location specific availability for staff.

1. Log into your JRNI account.
2. Click Your Business > Staff from the left-hand menu.
3. Locate a staff member from the list displayed, or use the search bar.
4. Click onto the staff member’s name to open their staff profile.
5. Click onto the Schedule tab.
6. Click Create New Schedule (if creating for first time), followed by the Create Shift Pattern button.

1. The shift editor will open for you to complete:
   1. Start date: the date the shift pattern should begin.
   2. Start time: the specific time the staff’s shift / working hours will start. Click the AM/PM options to update.
   3. End time: the specific time the staff’s shift / working hours will end. Click the AM/PM options to update.
   4. Repeats: how often the shift pattern should recur; weekly, daily, sporadically.
   5. Interval: the number of intervals between weekly or daily shift patterns, commonly used for “rotating” shift patterns. If your shift pattern runs daily/weekly and you set the interval to 1, it will repeat every day/week. Set the daily/weekly interval to 2 and it will repeat every other day/bi-weekly, and so on. 
   6. End: when the shift pattern should end; never, specific date, after x occurrences.
2. Click Save when complete.

The new shift pattern will now appear on the staff’s Schedule page, the main Calendar page (represented by the gray time cells), and the staff’s availability will be reflected in the customer booking journey.

Creating multiple shift patterns

If the staff member works different hours depending on the day, this can be reflected by creating multiple shift patterns for different days.

The example below shows one shift pattern which runs from Monday - Wednesday, 9am - 6pm. And another which runs Thursday - Friday, 8am - 5pm.

Below displays the set up for each of the above shift patterns.

Weekday vs. weekend availability

Another common example is creating one shift pattern for weekdays, and another for weekends. A similar setup can be done as above, by instead selecting Monday - Friday for the one shift pattern, and then selecting Saturday and/or Sunday for the other. 

Morning vs. afternoon availability

Alternatively, you might want to use multiple shift patterns within the same day. This is commonly used to account for staff breaks, or to single out AM vs. PM working hours. For example, if a staff member only has a few available hours dedicated to bookings during the morning, and another few in the afternoon, you could create one shift pattern for the AM hours, and a separate one for the PM hours.

In the example below, the staff member has three shift patterns set up; 

• One that runs Monday - Wednesday AM, 9am - 11am
• A second that runs Monday - Wednesday PM, 1pm - 5pm
• A third that run Thursday - Friday, 8am - 5pm

Individual and ad-hoc shifts

Edit individual shifts within the shift pattern if you require a one-off differentiation from the standard pattern. This allows you to change the working/operational hours for that day for the bookable staff member, without affecting the rest of the shift pattern.

1. Navigate to the Schedule tab on the staff profile, via Your Business > Staff > select staff member.
2. On the Schedule tab, click onto any existing shift pattern / slot.
3. A new window will appear for you to choose whether to edit the individual Shift or whole Shift Pattern.
4. Select the Shift option and click Submit.
5. Update the Start and End times to reflect the new individual shift requirements.
6. Click Save to complete.

Editing and deleting shifts and shift patterns

If you need to amend a particular shift or a recurring shift pattern, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Schedule tab on the staff profile.
2. Click onto any shift or shift pattern.
3. Choose whether to edit the Shift (ad-hoc availability) or Shift Pattern (recurring availability).

1. On the shift editor screen, either update and Save new shift / shift patterns settings, or click the Delete button to remove it entirely.

If deleting a shift or shift pattern, a final screen will ask you to confirm your changes before permanently removing the availability.

Multi location staff availability

Staff members created at the Parent level can have multiple shift patterns that are unique to each location they are assigned to. Setting up location specific availability ensures that a staff’s working hours are accurately reflected across each location (whilst also ensuring they don’t get double booked).

Location specific availability is created using Conditions on the Staff > Schedule tab. Visit our guide on creating availability for multi location staff to set this up.

Making staff continuously available

You can set staff members to "never booked" so that they are always available for appointments, regardless if this conflicts with a booked slot. This may be useful in cases where you have a “generic bookable staff member” set up, whereby you can manually transfer any bookings over to other staff members.

You can use this setting upon adding a new staff member, or you can simply edit an existing staff member. In both cases, use the Never mark as booked option in the Details tab on the staff member's profile. Here’s how:

1. Login to a location, where the staff member is assigned to.
2. Click Your Business > Staff from the left-hand menu.
3. Locate a staff member from the list displayed, or use the search bar.
4. Click onto the staff member’s name to open their staff profile.
5. On the Details tab, click the Edit button.
6. Select the checkbox next to the Never Mark as Booked option.
7. Click the Save button.

That staff member will now always appear as available on the calendar, even if they have conflicting bookings.

Making staff unavailable

If you need to remove availability from the staff member due to changes in their working hours, you can do so manually by following the steps above to Edit and delete shifts and shift patterns. 

If the staff member will only be unavailable for a short period of time (e.g., ad-hoc absences or holidays), it may be more efficient to block out time on their calendar instead.

Alternatively, if the staff member will be unavailable for an extended period of time, you can disable the staff member from the customer booking journey, until they are re-enabled. The staff member would still be visible on the staff calendar in Studio, however, and could still be booked internally if required.

Still have questions?

If you have any further questions about creating and managing staff availability, please contact JRNI Customer Support, who will be happy to help.