Temporary Availability Patterns

Once you have defined a default availability pattern for the selected employee, you can create a temporary pattern. Temporary patterns allow you to change the employee’s availability pattern for a particular time period without having to redefine an employee’s default pattern. A temporary pattern is uniquely identified by its Start Date and End Date values. In the case of a 14-day pattern, the Start Date is used to match a calendar day with a pattern day.

You can associate any number of temporary patterns with an employee. However, no two temporary patterns can overlap. When a new temporary pattern is defined, temporary patterns with which the new temporary pattern overlaps are truncated to eliminate the overlap. The truncation operation may result in:

  • The deletion of an older pattern. For example, when a new temporary pattern completely overlaps the old pattern.
  • The replacement of an older temporary pattern with two new temporary patterns. For example, if a new pattern’s start date is earlier than the old pattern’s start date and the new pattern’s end date is later than the old pattern’s end date.

    You can delete temporary availability patterns because the system can still use the availability defined in the default pattern.