Recurring schedules

Recurrence rule

Daily, weekly or monthly, once every so many periods (up to 52). In weekly mode you choose days of the week, and in monthly mode days of the month, including “Last day”. Day 31 is skipped in a shorter month rather than moving to another day.

Each schedule has a start time and a length (from 5 minutes to 24 hours), and may or may not have an end date. Weeks and months are counted using the calendar you chose in your settings: in the Solar Hijri calendar, the week starts on Saturday.

Start from a template

You don't have to write the rule from scratch. Templates fill in the time, the length and the repetition, and everything can be changed afterwards. “Workdays” means Saturday to Wednesday on the Solar Hijri calendar and Monday to Friday on the Gregorian one; weekly templates take the working week of the calendar you chose in your settings.

1. Start of workday and end of workday
2. Working hours
3. Daily stand-up
4. Weekly report and monthly review
5. Work shift and focus time
6. Custom schedule

Creating a schedule, step by step

You reach this form three ways: “Create” on the calendar, “New plan” in the “Schedules” list, and the third option when you tap a day or an empty hour on the calendar. In that last case the day and time of that cell are filled in for you.

1. On the “Calendar”, press “Create” and choose “Recurring schedule”
2. Pick a template or write the title yourself
3. Under “For”, say whether it is personal or belongs to one of your workspaces
4. Set the repetition to daily, weekly or monthly and choose the days
5. Set the start time and the length; the exact range is written beside it
6. Choose “From date” and, if needed, “Until”
7. Switch the reserved block and the task for each occurrence on or off
8. Check “Upcoming occurrences” and press “Save schedule”

The start and end of the workday

The most common schedule comes in two pieces: “Start of the workday”, say at 8:30 for a quarter of an hour, to go over today's work, and “End of the workday”, say at 17:00 for a quarter of an hour, to log the day's work. Both templates are reserved and make a task for each occurrence, so every workday begins with one small action and ends with another.

The “Working hours” template is different: it shows your whole presence on the calendar but is not reserved, because meetings have to be allowed inside it. To stop meetings being set with you outside your working hours, record them in “Calendar settings”.

Date range, weekdays and days of the month

Every schedule starts on its “From date”, and if you leave “Until” empty it runs without end. “No end date” removes an end date you had set.

In weekly mode, “Workdays” and “All” are two shortcuts, and “Repeat every” makes, for example, a fortnightly schedule. In monthly mode you can tap several days together, say the 1st, the 15th and the last day. Beside the repeat field the form writes the rule in one line, such as “every 2 months, day 1, 15, last day”, and shows the next four occurrences below it, worked out exactly as the server works them out.

Reserved or display only

With the “This time slot is reserved for meetings” option, the schedule becomes a busy slot and is labeled “Reserved; no meetings” on the calendar. From then on, any meeting that falls on this slot is rejected on the server. Without this option, the schedule is “Display only”: it's visible but doesn't block anything.

If the new schedule itself conflicts with meetings or other schedules, it isn't saved; but you can save it without the conflicting days.

Clashes with meetings, from both sides

The first side is the schedule itself. While you fill in the form, Flowra checks its occurrences from today up to six months ahead against the meetings that have not ended yet and the other reserved schedules of the same people, and shows the clashes before you save: the title, the day and time, and who is involved. While any clash remains, “Save schedule” stays locked unless you press “Save without conflicting days”.

The second side is every meeting that comes later. A meeting that falls on somebody's reserved block, whether it is made from the calendar, the meetings page or the assistant, is refused on the server, and up to three free times near that hour are suggested, free in everybody's calendar and inside their working hours. The booking page never offers reserved blocks either. A “display only” schedule clashes with nothing.

One action per occurrence

With “Create a task for each occurrence”, each occurrence creates a real action for each person, with that occurrence's time and length, up to 14 days ahead, topped up every hour. Exactly one is created per person per day, never more. These actions have no reminder of their own; if you want a reminder, set it on the action.

Team schedules: assign, request, approve

In a workspace, owners and editors can create a schedule and assign it to any member. A viewer, or anyone who taps “Request for myself”, can only request it for themselves, and the request stays pending until a manager approves it. A request that has a conflict is still saved, so the manager can see the conflict and decide.

The schedule manager has four tabs: Mine, Team, Requests and Archive. Notifications are sent for assignments, requests, approvals, rejections and schedule changes.

1. A member sends a request, or a manager assigns directly
2. The request lands in the “Requests” tab with an “Awaiting you” label
3. The manager taps “Approve” or “Reject request”, with an optional note
4. The requester can withdraw the request until it's approved

The schedule sheet: this occurrence, and the whole schedule

Tap any occurrence on the calendar and that schedule's sheet opens, keeping two parts deliberately apart. At the top is “This occurrence”: that occurrence's day and time, “Task for this occurrence” when the schedule makes tasks, “Move”, “Cancel this occurrence” and, for an occurrence already changed, “Restore to schedule”. Below is the whole schedule: the rule, the date range, reserved or display only, how many occurrences were changed, the people and who made it.

The buttons at the bottom of the sheet always act on the whole schedule: “Edit whole schedule”, “Pause” or “Resume”, and behind the “...” menu two final ones, “End as of today” and “Delete schedule”, kept out of easy reach so they are not pressed by accident. If a manager of the space set the schedule up and you are only one of its people, the sheet is read-only and tells you to talk to them about changes.

Pause, cancel one occurrence, move

You can pause the whole schedule from today and resume it later, end it as of today, edit it or delete it. You can also cancel a single occurrence or move it to a different time and length; when moving, up to three free times that same day are suggested. A moved occurrence is labeled “Moved” on the calendar, and “Restore to schedule” puts it back in its place.

What each change does to the tasks

“Untouched” means a task still in its planned state. An action somebody started or finished is history, and no change to the schedule removes it.

1. Pause: untouched future tasks from today on are removed
2. Resume: clashes are checked again and tasks are made again from today
3. End as of today: untouched tasks after today are removed
4. Cancelling or moving one occurrence: that day's task is removed, or made again at the new time
5. Editing the whole schedule: untouched future tasks are rebuilt on the new rule
6. Deleting the schedule: its occurrences leave the calendar; started or finished tasks stay

On a phone

On a phone everything is the same; only the buttons move: “Create” sits at the top of the calendar next to the page name, the form and the schedule sheet slide up from the bottom of the screen, weekdays show by their first letter, and the final actions are still behind the “...” menu.

A complete path: a team's workday

This is what you see in the Northwind Marketing demo space, and each step is explained in one of the sections above.

1. An owner or editor of the space creates “Start of the workday” and “End of the workday” for all members
2. The daily stand-up is set as reserved so nobody books a meeting over it
3. Each member creates their own focus time as a personal schedule
4. A member who wants the evening shift sends a request and a manager approves it
5. On a day without a stand-up, just that one occurrence is cancelled or moved
6. Every morning and evening, that occurrence's action is waiting in “Actions”