Absences and appointments bundles in the personal calendar all day events outside the pure time recording: appointments with customers and colleagues, planned and approved absences such as vacation and sickness, public holidays and shared calendars of other employees. From the calendar appointments can be turned into project time bookings and absences requested.
Note: The appointment calendar is available in ZEP Compact and ZEP Professional. In ZEP Clock the area is not available. Absence recording additionally requires the Absences and overtime module. Calendar shares and showing other employees' calendars are available without an add-on module.
Calendar and views
The calendar shows appointments, absences and public holidays in a unified view. The current month is preset; arrow keys or the date symbol switch the displayed period.
Available views and features:
Month, week and day view as well as a compact appointment overview as list.
Employee-specific public holiday calendars: the displayed public holidays depend on the assigned country and federal state.
Create and edit appointments and absences by click on a date.
Move by dragging: existing appointments can be dragged with the mouse to another time slot.
Show other calendars: shared calendars of colleagues are color-highlighted.
Recurring appointments with configurable repetition rule.
Time zone: presettable per employee — the new setting takes effect after re-login.
With recorded absences the absence reasons appear in the stored colors. A click on an absence reason shows or hides it (filled circle = shown, empty circle = hidden). Public holidays and appointments can also be shown and hidden individually.
Appointments
Appointments are maintained in the personal calendar and can be kept private or shared with colleagues. From an appointment a project time can later be recorded — the most important appointment data is taken over automatically.
Create and edit an appointment
To create a new appointment click on a date in the calendar and choose New appointment. The following fields are available:
Field | Meaning |
Title | Appointment label, shown in the calendar. |
Date and time | Date freely choosable. By unchecking All day time and time zone can be entered. |
Repetition | Under Show details configurable as recurring appointment (daily, weekly, monthly). |
Location | Free text for the venue. |
Calendar | Own calendar or a calendar shared with the employee. |
Description | Detail text for the appointment. |
Availability | Busy or Available — affects availability queries in calendar clients when searching for common free appointments. |
Visibility | Public (visible to authorized people), Only time and date or Private (visible only to the calendar owner). |
Project and task | Optional for later project time recording from the appointment. |
Guests | Employees with stored e-mail address or manually added external e-mail addresses. Invited participants can accept or decline the appointment via a link in the invitation mail. |
Created appointments can be moved by dragging and edited or deleted at any time.
Note on change history: e-mails sent due to appointments (invitations, changes) are not listed in the change history of an appointment.
Record project time from an appointment
From an existing appointment a project time booking can be created with a few clicks. Steps:
Click on the appointment in the calendar.
Choose the action Record project time in the appointment window.
ZEP redirects to project times and automatically takes over date, time (adjusted to the minute grid), project and task (if maintained in the appointment) and the appointment title as note. As activity the last chosen activity is preset.
Supplement the entry if necessary and confirm with Save.
Absences
Absences cover vacation, sickness, school, maternity protection and further absence reasons. They are recorded in the calendar, run through an approval workflow depending on the absence reason and reduce the remaining vacation or change the hours balance.
Annual leave and absences at a glance
The calendar shows at a glance the annual leave for the current business year and the following year, planned absences and absence requests with their current status. Depending on the setting the overtime balance for the current date also appears.
Administrators and department managers (with Locations and departments module) can approve or delete shown absences directly in the calendar. On approval the employee automatically receives a notification by e-mail.
Note: This section summarizes the most important actions for the self-view. The complete workflow, including absence reason master data, approver configuration, vacation accounts, half days and attachments, is described in the module article Record absences. Absences require the Absences and overtime module.
View absence requests
In the calendar absence requests appear from the previous month onwards — both own requests and, with corresponding permissions, requests from employees in deputy. For a longer retrospective and for reports across multiple years the full request history is available under Reports > My reports > Applications for leave.
Status display of absence requests
Absence requests are displayed with number of days, date and current status:
White: Submitted — waiting for the approver's decision.
Green: Approved — the absence is finally recorded.
Red: Rejected — the request was declined.
White with greyed-out text: Withdrawn — the employee has withdrawn the request themselves.
Note: An absence request can only be approved, rejected or withdrawn as a whole. If only certain absences shall be approved, the request must be withdrawn or rejected and a new request with the absences to be approved must be submitted.
Record an absence
To record a new absence click on + Absence or choose a date in the calendar and select New absence. Steps:
Choose Point in time for a single day or Period for a block.
Select the appropriate absence reason. Approval-requiring reasons are marked with a colored border.
Choose the duration: Complete day, 50% of the regular working hours or Time.
Optionally add a note.
Confirm with Save for a plan without request, or with Save and apply for an approval request.
In the request window further planned absences, a general note or file attachments can be added to the request before it is sent.
In practice: A second absence reason can be entered per day (for example half day vacation and half day flextime). On Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays no absences can be recorded. Requested absences appear hatched in the calendar; only after approval do they appear fully in the absence reason color.
Edit and delete absences
With Delete absences up to and including the specified end date can be removed. The scissors symbol when editing an absence allows splitting the period into single days — useful when a single day shall be deleted or assigned a different absence reason. Depending on permissions own absences can also be approved by oneself.
Calendar approvals for deputy and team views
Calendar approvals represent deputy arrangements or team views. For example assistants can view and manage the executive board appointments, or teams can check each other's availability.
View shared calendars
Under Approvals all employees appear whose appointments and/or absences the logged-in user is allowed to view or edit. A click on the name or the circle of the employee shows or hides their entries. The display color can be adjusted per employee via the pen symbol next to the name.
Manage own approvals
Via Settings the personal profile opens in the Calendar area. There own calendar shares are managed and the instructions for embedding the ZEP calendar into external applications (Outlook, Apple Calendar, iOS, Android) are provided — see Profile.
Note: calendars of employees who have left without a future employment period no longer appear in the list of shared calendars.