You can now create Internet Calendar Feeds for popular events that occur throughout the system. The use of Calendar Feeds allows a business to share important dates without having to be logged in to the platform. Rather, you and your staff can be made aware of events such as birthdays and leave from your own calendars such as Outlook, Google and Hotmail, to name a few.
A short video on this setup can be found here.
Calendar events are automatically updated to reflect the current state of events within the system. There are three types of Calendar Feeds that can be configured:
- Approved Leave
- Pay Run
- Birthday
- Anniversaries
NB. When the calendar feed is connected it shows future events only.
Getting Started
Only full access users have permission to create calendar feeds. To get started, simply go to the 'Payroll settings' > 'Calendar feeds' page and click the 'Add' button to start creating a new calendar feed. The event types include:
Approved leave
This will show leave requests for non-terminated employees that have a status of approved.
Any employee group that you have created will be listed as an option to select if you want to limit the calendar to certain groups of employees.
Pay run
Based on this event type, you have the option to filter using Pay date OR Period end date, and a specific pay schedule:
Birthday
The 'Birthday' feed will display birthdays for all non-terminated employees.
Any employee group that you have created will be listed as an option to select if you want to limit the calendar to certain groups of employees.
Anniversaries
Creating an anniversary calendar will allow you to report on an employees' start or anniversary date. These dates are derived from the Employee file > Details page ('Start' and 'Anniversary' fields).
By creating an anniversary calendar, you are able to:
-
- Review employee pays
- Wish them a 'happy anniversary'
- Allow employees within the business to wish them a 'happy anniversary'
- Update any employee entitlements based on their length of service and negotiated terms (that is not already done so automatically within the platform).
The filters available are:
- Date type: Start date OR anniversary date
- Employee group: Any employee group that you have created will be listed as an option to select if you want to limit the calendar to certain groups of employees.
Once you have created the required calendar, click the 'Save' button. This will create a unique URL that can be shared with staff and used with Calendar and Mail clients.
Note: The calendar feed provided by this URL can be accessed by anyone without having to log into the system.
Filters on Calendar Feeds
You will notice that when creating an Approved Leave or Birthday calendar feed, you have the option of filtering by employee group. This will allow you to restrict what employee data is shared in the calendar feed. More information on employee groups can be found here.
When creating a Pay Run calendar feed, you can choose to apply the pay date or period end date to the feed. Additionally, if there is more than one pay schedule set up in your business, you can elect to have all pay schedules in the one feed or alternatively create a separate feed for each pay schedule.
Updating Calendar Feeds
You should be cautious when updating Calendar Feed settings as this will effect anyone subscribing to the calendar feed. For example if you were to modify the filters the next time the Calendar Feed is updated all events will be replaced with the new filter settings.
Note: You will not be able to change the Event Type for a Calendar Feed after creation to avoid unexpected feed updates.
Generating a New Token
To update the token, simply click on the Calendar name to display the edit widget. Click on 'Generate' and copy/share the new URL.
Note: Any clients using the existing URL will no longer be able to receive calendar event updates for this feed.
Deleting a Calendar Feed
To delete a calendar feed, hover your mouse over the specific Calendar until you see the "x". Click on the "x" to remove the calendar feed.
Note: Deleting a calendar feed will result in users subscribed to that feed no longer receiving updates.
Calendar Feed Caching
To provide our users with the best possible performance without comprising our system speed and quality, we cache each calendar feed for a period of time. This means that calendar feeds will not be 'real time' but instead a delayed view.
Note: Several Internet Calendar providers such as Google Calendar and Outlook Live/Hotmail will also cache our calendar feeds. This can result in further delays to the data displayed in a calendar feed.
Instructions on how to subscribe to a calendar feed can be found here.