There are two types of time off rules in Assembled:

1. Rules that dictate whether an agent can request time off at all for a given date

2. Rules that dictate whether a request will be auto-approved or require manager approval

Rules for blocking time off requests

[Beta] Rules for time off auto-approval

FAQ

Rules for blocking time off requests

The first set of time off rules let you set up your time off policies in Assembled so employees can’t submit requests that are outside of your parameters. With these rules, you can make sure employees submitting time off requests understand when and why their requests are out of policy.

Here’s how to set up time off rules:

Navigate to Staffing > Time off requests > Time off rules

In the modal that appears, enter your time off policy parameters. First, choose a rule name and enter a description so you can easily identify your rule in the future. You will be able to configure the rule based on the rule type.

Assembled offers the following rule types:

• Maximum advance
  • Define how many days in advance employees can submit certain types of time off requests
  • Choose which channel, site, team, queue and skill are affected
  • Use this option when you want to restrict employees from making time off requests too many months or years in advance
• Minimum advance
  • Define how few days in advance employees can submit certain types of time off requests
  • Choose which channel, site, team, queue and skill are affected
  • Use this option when you want to restrict employees from making specific kinds of time off requests with too little notice.
• Overlap
  • Define the number of employees who can submit for certain types of time off events
  • Choose the affected request dates
  • Choose which channel, site, team, queue and skill are affected
  • Use this option when you want to limit how many employees are out at a time, either as a consistent policy or during specific time periods
• No time off allowed
  • Choose the event types and dates where time off is not allowed
  • Choose which channel, site, team, queue and skill are affected

Once you’ve finished entering your parameters, click the Save rule button.

When an employee attempts to submit an out-of-policy time off request, the Submit request button will be grayed out and they will see a list of reasons why they are not able to make the request.

[Beta] Rules for time off auto-approval

With the new time off auto-approvals, any request that meets all rules at the time of submission will be automatically approved, eliminating the need for manual intervention.

How to get started

There are 2 steps to setting up auto-approvals:

1. Configuring auto-approval rules
2. Setting up role-based permissions

⚠️ Note: We highly recommend setting up auto-approval rules before granting permission to any agents to have their requests auto-approved. If permission is granted before any rules are set up, all time off requests will be auto-approved.

Step 1: Configuring auto-approval rules

Before enabling auto-approvals for groups of agents, you can set up specific time off rules to fine-tune which requests will be auto-approved, and which will be passed along for manual review.

New rules

We have added 2 new rule types that are just for restricting auto-approvals. Setting up these new rules will help prevent an agent from taking advantage of the auto-approval system.

Maximum hours per month:

• Set a limit on the number of hours any agent can have auto-approved within a 30-day window of their time off request.
• Ex: no more than 10 hours auto-approved within a 30 day window. If an agent has already had 2 5-hour time off requests auto-approved within 30 days, any other submitted requests will require manual approval.

Maximum working days:

• Set a limit on the number of working days a request can contain to be auto-approved.
• Working days are calculated using shift patterns, and counting days the number of days that contain at least one shift.
  • Ex: if an agent’s shift pattern is 9am-5pm Monday - Friday, in a 7- day window Sunday - Saturday, the agent has 5 working days and 2 non-working days.
• Ex: no more than 10 working days per auto-approved request. If an agent’s shift pattern is 9am-5pm Monday - Friday, if they submit a request for 3 weeks/21 days, the request would have 15 working days and would require manual approval.

Configure other rules for auto-approval evaluations

Besides the 2 new auto-approval rules, any existing rule type can also be used for auto-approvals. In the current time off system, breaking any rule would block an agent from submitting a time off request. Now, rules can be configured so that they wouldn’t block an agent from submitting a new request, even if the rule is broken. While the rule won’t block an agent from submitting a request, the rule will be used to determine if that request should be auto-approved.

With this new rule setting, admin to set up different levels of rule restrictions on what should block an agent’s request from being submitted vs what should block an agent’s request from being auto-approved.

Step 2: Role permission configuration

Auto-approvals can be enabled as a role-based permission. Agents must have shift patterns enabled in order to have time off auto-approvals.

Once auto-approvals are enabled for an agent, any time off request they submit will be evaluated will be auto-approved if the request passes all rules. If the request is not auto-approved, the request will follow the regular flow of waiting for manual review.

Notifications for auto-approved time off

Upon auto-approval, managers will receive an notification as well as a summary of the rule evaluations. If the request does not pass all rules, managers will be notified normally to manually approve/deny the request.

FAQ

• Any requests that pass the blocking rules but fail to meet the auto-approval rules will not be auto-denied: they'll await manual manager approval 
• You can edit, duplicate, or delete a time off rule by clicking to expand the option menu next to the time off rule.

• Currently, each time off rule can only be applied to a single time off event type. If you'd like to apply the same rule to multiple time off event types, you must duplicate and edit the rules.
• When it’s time to approve / deny time off requests, managers will see the most up-to-date evaluations to help their decision making.

• Users can filter to requests that were auto-approved using the status filter at the top