Workforce settings

Workforce settings let admins configure how scheduling works across your organization in deskbird. From a single page, you can enable half-day scheduling, customize the scheduling statuses your users see, and control how far back different roles can view and edit past schedules — making sure your scheduling setup matches the way your teams actually work.

1. Access Workforce settings
2. Half day scheduling
3. Access to past scheduling
4. Scheduling statuses
5. FAQs

1. Access Workforce settings

Workforce settings are managed by global administrators in the Admin Portal.

To open the page, go to Admin > Workforce > Workforce settings.

From here, you can configure three areas:

• Half day scheduling — enable or disable half-day schedules for all users.
• Access to past scheduling — control how far back users and admins can view and edit past schedules.
• Scheduling statuses — manage the statuses users can pick when planning their work week.

Each section has its own Save and Reset buttons. Changes only take effect once you click Save.

2. Half day scheduling

Half day scheduling lets users plan two different statuses for the same day — for example, Office in the morning and Mobile work in the afternoon. This is useful for teams with flexible hybrid setups, split shifts, or partial days off.

Enable half day scheduling

1. Go to Admin > Workforce > Workforce settings.
2. Under Half day scheduling, toggle Enable half day schedules for all users in deskbird on.
3. Click Save.

Once enabled, deskbird users can schedule two different statuses for the same day. When setting up policies, you can define how half-day schedules are calculated to ensure accurate tracking and compliance.

Define the mid-time

The mid-time determines how a workday is split into two halves and impacts booking periods and attendance tracking.

To configure it, go to Admin > Workspace > Office settings and set the mid-time (for example, 13:00) for the relevant office.

💡 Tip: HRIS sync for half-day scheduling is supported for Personio and HiBob. More providers will follow.

3. Access to past scheduling

The Access to past scheduling section controls how far back different user roles can view and edit past schedules. This lets you align scheduling access with your company's compliance, HR, and reporting requirements.

You can configure two separate role groups, each with its own view and edit timeframe.

Regular users, group managers and line managers

Controls access to colleague's schedulings (view), own schedulings (view and edit) and managed colleagues' schedulings (view and edit).

• View access — number of weeks in the past these users can view schedules.
• Edit access — number of weeks in the past these users can edit schedules.

Global administrators, office administrators, managers and respective custom roles

Controls access to all colleagues' schedulings (view and edit). This also applies to all custom roles that have the permissions View scheduling of all users and Manage scheduling of all users enabled.

• View access — number of weeks in the past these roles can view schedules.
• Edit access — number of weeks in the past these roles can edit schedules.

Configuration rules

• Both view and edit timeframes can be set from 0 to 52 weeks.
• Setting a value to 0 disables past access entirely for that role group.
• The edit timeframe cannot exceed the view timeframe — users must be able to view a schedule before they can edit it.
• The default value is 1 week for both view and edit access. Companies that don't change anything keep this default.

Once you've made your changes, click Save to apply them. Click Reset to discard unsaved changes.

⚠️ Important: Who can act on whose schedule still depends on the user's role (global administrator, office administrator, manager, group manager, line manager) or custom role permissions. The past scheduling settings only define the timeframe for that access — not which schedules each role can reach.

4. Scheduling statuses

Scheduling statuses define the options users can choose from when planning their work week — for example, Office, Mobile work, Absent, or Business travel. You can customize these statuses to reflect how your organization works.

Status properties

Each scheduling status has the following properties:

• Status type — select a predefined type (Office, Mobile work, Absent, Business travel) or choose Custom to create your own.
• Custom display name — optionally set a custom name that users will see instead of the default label. Note: predefined scheduling statuses are translated automatically, but adding a custom display name removes these automatic translations. For custom statuses, a display name is required.
• Color — choose a color to visually distinguish each status in schedules and analytics.
• Active / Inactive — toggle whether the status is available to users. Inactive statuses are hidden from the scheduling view.

Add a scheduling status

Click + Add scheduling status to create a new entry. The new status appears at the end of the list. Select a status type, optionally add a custom display name, pick a color, and make sure the toggle is set to Active. Then click Save.

Reorder statuses

Scheduling statuses are shown to users in the order you set here. Use the grip marks (⠿) on the left side of each row to drag and drop statuses into your preferred order, then click Save.

Delete a scheduling status

Click the trash icon on the right side of a row to delete a status. If any schedules are currently using that status, a dialog will ask you to choose between two actions:

• Migrate existing schedules to another scheduling status, then delete the current one.
• Delete immediately — all schedules and analytics linked to this status will be permanently removed.

⚠️ Important: Other office is a default status that cannot be edited or deleted. It appears under the Office status in the web app.

5. FAQs