Chapter 4 -  Advanced Staffinder Features

Messages

One major feature in Staffinder is the ability to send messages to other employees.  After you determine another employee is away from the office, the next step might be to send some information about a visitor or caller.  Not to be confused with an e-mail system, Staffinder allows users to send messages to other employees.  Message recipients can view, save and delete messages as needed.

To send a message to another employee, either:

1. Select the user in the Browser and click the "Send Message" link in the details pane.
2. Click the "Send Message" link in the main menu bar.

After filling out the form click the OK button to forward the message to the employee.

Receiving Messages:
When other employees send you messages they will appear in your My Messages view under the Messages Menu.  Unread messages with be in Bold.

Sent Messages: You can also view the messages that you have sent to others.  You can delete them if you wish.  These are seperate messages and deleting a sent message will not remove it from recipients inbox.

Vacation Requests: Vacation Request are only received by vacation managers and require approval or disapproval.  This is covered in chapter 2 of this manual.

Deleting Messages:
Once you are done looking at a message, you may want to delete it.  We recommend keeping your message box as clean as possible by deleting non important messages.  This will help maintain peak performance of Staffinder.

Replying to Messages:
You have the ability to reply to a message by opening the message and Clicking the Reply button.  This will clear the form and prepare it to be sent back to the originator.  When your ready to send the message click on Send.

Status Scheduler

The Status Scheduler will give you the ability to schedule future status changes.  You may schedule as many as you like and your status will be updated accordingly.  With this feature you will be able to setup your daily schedule in the event you will be out of the office.  You can view your schedules via the Schedules menu.

The Scheduler Service will monitor your entries and change your status at the appropriate time.  Once a schedule has been activated it will automatically be removed from the system.

To add a schedule:

1. Click the Add button on the toolbar.  The schedule Details screen will appear
2. Enter the time and date you want your schedule to be update.
3. Enter any Back or Comments if needed.
4. Click the OK button to add the schedule

Modify an existing schedule:

1. Highlight the schedule in the grid and click the Modify button on the toolbar or right-click on the schedule in the grid and click Modify from the popup menu.  The details screen will appear.
2. After making the necessary changes click the OK button to save the schedule.

Delete a schedule:

1. Highlight the schedule in the grid and click the Delete button on the toolbar or right-click on the schedule in the grid and click Delete from the popup menu.
2. Click the OK button when asked to verify the delete.

Recurring Events

If you have a regularly scheduled event or meeting that happens at the same time each week or on a specific day you have the ability to create the event once and have it automatically schedule it for all future days.   This applies to both the resource and the personal schedulers.

Creating a Recurring Schedule:  To create a recurring schedule click the Recurrence button at the bottom of the schedule details screen from either the Resource Schedule or the Personal Schedule screen.  The Recurrence schedule screen will be displayed. Select the correct recurrence schedule for the event and click the Create Recurrence button.  Once the Recurring schedule has been created the Recurrence button on the schedule details screen will change to Red letters.  The start date is required and can be any date you choose.  All schedules will begin on the start date and continue until the end date.  Leave the end date blank to have the schedule continue indefinitely.

NOTE: If you browse the events into the future you will find that the recurring schedules will only be displayed up to one year in the future.  They will continue to occur but for performance reasons we only forecast out one year.

Deleting a Recurring Schedule:  To delete a recurring schedule click the Delete button at the bottom of the recurrence details screen.