Subscribing to a Calendar/Roster
Staff may subscribe to their calendar from various places in SupportAbility. This allows an additional calendar to be added to their chosen calendar and provides limited information regarding the Activities they have been rostered into. This article covers subscribing to your Roster from these various places, as well as how to do so manually. The Activities that are synchronised are discussed, as is information regarding what happens when a Staff Member leaves the organisation.
Audience: HR Specialist, Team Leaders, and Support Staff.
Summary
The following list summarises the content within this article. Click on the links below to take you to the relevant sections:
- Subscribing to your Roster
- From 'My Staff Account'
- From the Roster
- Staff with the Team Leader privilege
- Subscribing to a Roster manually
- How to import a calendar from Outlook
- How does this calendar appear once it has been imported?
- Which Activities are synchronised?
- What happens when a Staff member leaves the organisation and their account is deactivated?
Subscribing to your Roster
From My Staff Account
Staff can subscribe to their own Roster from either their 'My Staff Account':
By selecting 'Subscribe to your calendar':
This will initiate the process in the default calendar, such as Outlook, via the webcal link.
From the Roster
The other alternative is for Staff to navigate to their Roster:
Ensure that it is set to the default 'My Roster', noting that this will be the only option available for Staff that do not have the Team Leader privilege:
Then select 'Subscribe to roster':
This will initiate the process in the default calendar, such as Outlook, via the
Staff with Team Leader privileges
For Staff with higher duties and provided they have the Team Leader Staff Account privilege, the Roster can be filtered to the preferred view e.g. a specific Site or Site/Service combination depending on your level of access:
Once the required Roster is selected, select the 'Subscribe to Roster' button. This will ensure you can see all of the Activities scheduled for your team.
N.B. This may not be the best way to gain visibility of Site/Service Rosters, however, due to the sheer volume of information included. Many providers get great benefit from using the Activity Report for this purpose. Please review the article of this name linked below for more information.
Subscribing to a Roster manually
If the desired calendar, such as Outlook, is not set as the default calendar on the PC, laptop or device, a copy of the webcal link can be added as an additional calendar manually.
Simply right-click or CTRL-click on the subscribe button, and select 'Copy Link Address':
This will copy the webcal link which can be added as an external calendar which is required before configuring this in your chosen calendar.
How to import a calendar to Outlook
- Sign in to Outlook.com using a web browser
- At the bottom of the page, select the calendar icon
- Select 'Discover Calendars' under Other calendars
- Select 'From web' and in the 'Link to calendar' section, paste the calendar link copied from the Subscribe to Roster button
- Enter a name for this calendar e.g. Roster (SupportAbility) and select 'Import'. This will result in an import successful confirmation:
N.B. The steps to import a calendar to Outlook may vary depending on the version you are using and the device you are attempting to configure this from. Please refer to Microsoft Outlook's help resources for further information.
Additionally, there are various instructions available online to assist further in regards to subscribing to internet calendars, such as:
How does this calendar appear once it has been imported?
Once the calendar has been imported, this may be selected from the 'Other calendars' menu:
Selecting one of these appointments will display more information regarding the Activity as it has been configured in SupportAbility i.e. the Activity Name, Date/s and Times, Location, as well as the Service and Site it is related to, and any Staff & Clients that have been added:
Using the Outlook app on a mobile phone will display this information as such:
Why is only limited information displayed in the calendar?
SupportAbility limits the information included in the calendar subscription appointments for security reasons. If Staff Members require instruction and further information regarding the Activity, they will need to log into SupportAbility to locate this, which can be accessed via a tablet or PC.
The Activity Schedule Dashboard Portal is designed specifically to highlight the Staff Members current Activities and allow them to navigate to these quickly e.g:
Which Activities are synchronised?
Once subscribed, Activities synchronised with your chosen device or calendar are those that occur two weeks before today; through to either two months from today, or, up to the limit of 2,000 Activities in total.
It is important to note that if Staff Members use Google calendar on the web or on their android device to subscribe to their SupportAbility Roster, they may notice that the Roster does not update regularly, as changes are made to the Roster within SupportAbility. More information regarding this has been outlined in the Roster sync issue with android devices - Google calendar not updating article linked below.
What happens when a Staff member leaves the organisation and their account is deactivated?
When a Staff Member subscribes to a Roster/Calendar, every time their calendar checks SupportAbility for updates, SupportAbility checks to ensure their Staff Account is active and does not provide any information if the user account has been deactivated.