Activating Out of Office rules with Plans in Timesheets
Use Tempo Timesheets to manage planned absences by logging or planning time on internal issues (e.g., PTO, sick leave). The Out-of-Office Assistant can then automatically create and manage out-of-office rules for those periods—even if the plans are partial days.
Introduction
What This Does
Connecting Tempo Timesheets with Out-of-Office Assistant ensures that when a user plans time on a designated internal issue (like PTO), a matching out-of-office rule is activated in Jira.
Partial-Day Coverage
If you schedule only part of a day in Timesheets (e.g., 9:00–12:00), Out-of-Office Assistant can treat the user as unavailable for those hours, then mark them as available for the rest of the day.
Note: If you are using Tempo Planner instead, refer to Activating Out-of-Office rules with Plans in Tempo Planner
Please note:
Overlapping Plans: If you log two overlapping partial-day entries on PTO issues, Out-of-Office merges them into a single continuous block. If your second plan starts immediately after the first, Out-of-Office extends your unavailability.
Editing Plans: If you adjust your Timesheets plan (e.g., change 9:00–12:00 to 9:00–11:00), Out-of-Office updates accordingly—no need to manually edit the rule.
Full-Day Coverage
To be marked as Out of Office for the entire duration of the day, use plans that are 8 hours or longer (e.g., 9:00–17:00). This will allow the app to also work for assignments made outside of business hours.
Walkthrough
Navigate to Tempo Timesheets and the day of your plan
1. Click on Plan Time
Out of Office Assistant is integrated with Tempo Plans. You can make use of this entity with Tempo Timesheets whenever you select the option of Planning Time instead of Logging Time.
2. Select the internal issue in the Plan Time form
Search for the internal issues that you have configured for your user. In this example, we will select II-1: Vacation
3. Check the Period option
If your plan will have a duration of multiple dates, make sure to check the Period option below the Description of the plan.
If your plan will be for just one day, leave this option unchecked.
4. Select your End Date
Together with the initial date, this will define the Start and End Date of the connected Out of Office rules.
In this case, we'll pick July 31st, 2023
5. Define the Duration of the Plan
Tempo Timesheets doesn't have a predefined duration of your plans.
It's very important to pick the right time, as this will have a consequence on the duration of the Out of Office rules and Out of Office events, including reassignments.
When plans are 8 hours or longer, Out of Office rules will be active for 24 hours (from 00:00 until 23:59)
When plans are shorter than 8 hours, Out of Office rules will be active for the exact time defined in the plan.
6. Define exact times
If your plan is for less than 8 hours, make sure to define the exact From and To times.
7. See your Plan
8. Find the Out of Office rules for that plan
Back to Out of Office Assistant, you will see that the plans have generated one rule for each of the templates mapped to the internal issue to which the plan was added.
Rules generated with Tempo plans are displayed in a specific table with additional info:
Start Date displays the starting time
End Date displays the ending time
Internal Issue links to the internal issue to which the Out of Office Template has been mapped
Template displays the name of the Out of Office Template that has generated the rule
9. Deleting and Modifying Plans
Changes to Tempo Plans will propagate to connected rules
Deleting an existing plan will remove the connected rules
Changing the dates of the plan will modify the dates of connected rules accordingly
Changing the duration of the plan will modify the duration of connected rules accordingly
Changing the internal issue of the plan will replace the connected rules. However, you will lose track of how many issues were reassigned by replaced rules.
10. Default logic for Stacking Plans
Tempo allows to make multiple plans in a single day, with no limitation on the total number of hours.
Out of Office Assistant will read these plans and create out of office rules with the following logic:
When a plan already exists for any day with a duration of 8 hours, it will generate rules for the entire day. Other plans will be ignored.
If a plan has a duration of less than 8 hours, other plans for that day may generate OoO rules for the duration of the day that still isn't planned.
