Changelog
What's new at Vacation Tracker?
Birthdays and Notifications
🎂 Released Birthday Notifications to keep your team in the loop on upcoming special days!
🔔 Improved cross-platform notification reliability for Slack, Teams, Email, Google, and Microsoft Teams.
🔒 Strengthened security with fixes targeting common vulnerability patterns.
✨ Polished wording and UI copy across different screens in the app.
Zapier Beta and System Enhancements
⚡ Opened beta access for the Zapier integration. Reach out to hello@vacationtracker.io to join.
📜 Updated company audit logs to include information about deleted automations.
📊 Reports now allow you to hide empty and non-relevant columns for cleaner data.
ℹ️ Added tooltips to the team availability section of the User Dashboard to clarify various leave types.
🛠️ Improved the Seniority Entitlement and Entitlement by Role automations with minor enhancements.
New User Profile Menu and Revamped Energy Pages
🔋 Revamped the User Energy page, including new visual indicators, labels, and tooltips.
📝 Redesigned the User pop menu for easier access to settings, including color theme and language preference.
👀 Watchers can now receive notifications for cancelled and edited leave requests (previously, only approved requests triggered notifications).
Recharge Type Quiz and Guess the Type Game
We’ve added a quick, 30-second Recharge Type quiz that appears after leave requests. It helps users discover how they recharge best and adds a personal touch to their PTO experience.
Once ten people on your team complete the quiz, you’ll unlock Guess the Type, a fun streak-based game where teammates try to guess each other’s Recharge Types and climb the leaderboard.
This update brings a simple, engaging moment into your daily workflow and helps teams connect in a new way.
Vacation Tracker is now FREE!
We’ve just launched our new free plan. It gives you unlimited users, simple PTO request management, one location, one department, one leave type, one approver, and full access to notifications, the wallchart, the calendar view, and our Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Workspace integrations.
It’s a real free plan, not a trial, and it’s perfect for smaller teams that want an easy way to track time off. You can start using it right away.
New Sidebar, Action Menu, and Energy Level
🧭 We’ve redesigned the main menu for simpler, faster navigation and easier access to key features.
⚡ A new right-hand action menu gives you quick access to Docs, Changelog, and Announcements.
💚 Monitor your team’s wellbeing through time-off patterns with our new Energy Level feature. (Beta)
New Users Dashboard, Improved Approver Onboarding and More
🖥️ A brand-new dashboard gives users a better overview at a glance: check your leave balance, upcoming leaves, team availability, approval status, holidays, and more.
🚀 New Approvers will now be onboarded with clearer steps and prompts.
📅 Calendar sync now shows public holidays.
🏖️ Half days are now allowed for custom workday lengths (e.g. 8.5 or 9 hour days).
🕒 You can now import leaves and TOILs with start times that are not on the hour (e.g. 10:15, 10:30, 10:45).
⏳ Half-day support added for the “brought forward” initial import.
📥 Simplified process for importing historical data.
⛱️ TOIL history is now shown similarly to regular leave history. Click into any request to see full details with timestamps.
Leave Request Notice Period, Expiration Settings, TOIL Upgrades & More
🆕 Leave Request Notice Period Add-On – Set a minimum notice employees must give before their leave starts. Available for free on both Core and Complete plans.
⚡ Department-Level Leave Request Expiration – Control how long pending leave requests stay open with new department settings for automatic expiration.
⏱ TOIL for Future Dates – Log TOIL for future dates and view it on both Calendar and Wallchart pages.
🌙 Refreshed Dark Mode – Enjoy a cleaner, more consistent dark mode experience.
🔑 New Login Page – A fresh, updated design welcomes you every time you log in.
❓ Updated Help Links – Access our new Help Center directly from the app.
Smarter scheduling, more control, and easier imports
⏳ Set individual work schedules for each user, even on a rotating 4-week basis. Ideal for tracking leave for part-time employees, shift workers, and non-standard schedules. Available on the Complete plan.
🫣 The Visibility Manager add-on just got better. In addition to department-level visibility, you can now restrict users to view only their own time off.
⌚ Import historical leave data in 15- or 30-minute increments, making it easier to track things like short breaks or medical appointments.
Our Mobile App Is Live!
📱 We’re live on both iOS and Android! Download the apps and manage time off on the go. Request leave, approve it, and view team schedules, all from your phone.
📥 We’ve also updated our import tool. You can now import leave intervals in 15 or 30-minute chunks, making time tracking even more precise.
Set Custom Hours and Rotating Schedules
🕤 You can now set custom working hours for each day of the week. Need rotating schedules? We’ve got that too. Set up shifts that rotate every week, two weeks, or even monthly. It's perfect for teams with changing schedules.
Speak Your Request, Notify Watchers, and Set Work Hours
🤖 Requesting time off just got simpler—type or say your request in Slack or Teams, and Vacation Tracker will recognize it as a vacation!
👀 Notify team leads or stakeholders about approved leave requests without involving them in the approval process, keeping everyone informed.
⌛ With the Complete plan, request time off in 15- or 30-minute increments for even more flexibility.
🗓️ Set individual work hours for each user to better align with different schedules across your team, now available on the Complete plan.
Multi-Level Approvals, Custom Holidays, and Email Visibility for Managers
🚀 You can now create a smooth, structured approval flow with multiple levels, ensuring requests are sent to the right people before being finalized.
🎉 Keeping track of holidays has never been easier! You can easily customize holidays for your team, set up recurring ones, and import them without a hassle.
📧 If you’re managing leave through Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Workspace, you’ll now see user emails directly on their Vacation Tracker profiles—including those of the team members they manage!
Time-Off Caps, Multi-Level Approvals, and Swedish Language Support
👥 You can now set a limit on how many users can be away at the same time, so you’ll always have enough people on deck during the busy seasons.
✅ Our new multilevel approvals feature makes leave requests even easier for teams using Slack and Teams. Now, leave requests can be approved at multiple levels, ensuring the right people are in the loop.
⏳ To help you stay on top of your team’s leave requests, we’ve introduced the Leave Duration Limit Add-On. This lets you set limits on the duration of leave requests for better planning and control.
🇸🇪 We’ve added Swedish language support to the app! This makes Vacation Tracker even more accessible for teams who prefer to use it in Swedish.
Smarter Reports, Precise Leave Requests, and Flexible Email Setup
📝 Our reports are now more detailed, giving you deeper insights into your leave data.
🕒 You can now request leave in 15-minute increments. For example, request time off from 2:15 PM to 3:15 PM instead of just from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM.
🗓️ You can now carry over unused leave days as a negative balance if employees have overused their entitlements.
⚙️ Email Integration Update: You can now set everything up for a user before inviting them to Vacation Tracker.
👥 For email integration, you can now add “ghost” users with email addresses that are not active.
Year-End Reminders, Custom Workday Lengths, and Burnout Webinar Replay
⏩ The end of the year is here, so it’s the perfect time to check your Brought Forward settings and ensure everything’s ready for 2025. Let’s keep those unused days rolling over smoothly!
📏 Whether your workday is 8 hours, 5, or even 2, Vacation Tracker now lets you set your location’s workday length. Just choose between 2 and 12 hours, and your leave tracking will adjust to fit perfectly.
🎥 We had an amazing session on “Burnout? Fired.” on December 4th. If you couldn’t make it, don’t worry—you can catch the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_Fd83uSO6w
Now in 8 Languages + Negative Brought Forward for Smarter Quotas
🌎 Vacation Tracker now speaks 8 languages! Along with English, French, and Spanish, we’ve added Italian, German, Turkish, Polish, and Portuguese to better support your team.
🔁 Introducing Negative Brought Forward → automatically adjust future leave quotas when employees exceed their annual entitlement.
Blackout Periods, Calendar Syncing, and a Fresh New Look
📢 Good news! Blackout periods are now displayed in the Vacation Tracker calendar, making it easier to plan and manage time off.
📅 We’ve enhanced calendar syncing! Now, when you delete leave in the app, it will automatically sync with the shared calendar. Edited and canceled leaves will also sync seamlessly.
🚀 Vacation Tracker now boasts a fresh look and a smoother user experience. Enjoy faster navigation and a more intuitive design across all devices, including mobile.
Probation Periods and PTO Reports for Better Leave Management
🕔 Our new Probation Period feature makes managing leave for new hires easier than ever! Set a custom waiting period before new employees can request time off, whether company-wide or by department.
📊 We know how crucial it is to have full visibility into your team’s PTO. That’s why we’ve enhanced your reports! You can now view TOIL data alongside other leave balances, giving you even greater insight and control over your team’s time off.
Visibility Manager, Easier Navigation, and a Free PTO Trends E-Book
👀 Introducing the Visibility Manager! Now, you can restrict users to view only the leave information for their own department. Approvers will still have access to view the departments they manage, making leave tracking more efficient and organized.
🔍 We’ve updated the navigation for departments and sub-departments in the filter option. Now, it’s easier than ever to distinguish between them at a glance!
📚 Exciting News! We’ve just released a new e-book on the latest PTO trends. Stay informed and ahead of the game – download it for free right here: https://vacationtracker.io/resources/unique-pto-trends-ebook/
New Weekly Accruals
⏳ Introducing Weekly Accruals! You asked, we listened, and we delivered. Now, you can allow your employees to accrue leave weekly, adding even more flexibility to your leave management efforts.
Introducing Sub-Departments for Better Organization
Say hello to summer and a new level of organization! We are thrilled to introduce our latest feature in Vacation Tracker.
Sub-Departments: Improve your organizational structure with our new sub-departments feature.
- Core Plan: Includes one level of sub-departments.
- Complete Plan: Expands up to four levels of sub-departments.
Stay tuned for more updates in July! While it might be vacation season, we’re not slowing down and have plenty of new features planned.
New Seniority Entitlement Features + Open API for Seamless Integration
We’re excited to announce the latest upgrades to the Seniority Entitlement add-on, packed with new functionalities designed to enhance your experience and flexibility. Here’s what you can look forward to
🕰️ Flexible Calculation Start Dates: You now have the option to calculate entitlements from the start of the fiscal year.
⚙️ Manual Editing of Seniority Entitlement Quotas: You can now manually add days to the seniority entitlement quota in the user profile before hitting the first milestone.
👤 Retroactive Application of Seniority Entitlement: You can now choose to start applying seniority entitlements from the user’s employment start date, in addition to the existing option of starting from today.️️
But wait, that’s not all… 🥁🥁🥁
🛎️ Our Open API is finally here! The API feature enables one-way communication, allowing you to transfer information from Vacation Tracker to other external systems. If you’re interested, please reach out to us at sales@vacationtracker.io
Substitute Approvers and Aligned Accrual Caps
👥 Introducing Substitute Approvers! This new feature enables any company user to step in as an approver temporarily when the main department approvers are unavailable.
⏰ Now, you can align the Accrual Cap with the annual leave quota, promoting more effective use of accrued leave by employees.
Month of Learning
📢 March is our “Month of Learning” at Vacation Tracker. As we gear up for upcoming releases, we’re excited to invite you to our Office Hours on March 6th and Expert Hours on March 20th. Sign up link is waiting for you in the Hello Bar.
Earn Time Off for Overtime and Enjoy an Improved Mobile Dashboard
🕒 We’re excited to introduce TOIL (Time Off in Lieu), a new feature that transforms overtime work into well-deserved time off.
📱We’ve made the Vacation Tracker mobile dashboard better and easier to use. Now, it’s simpler to manage leave, check calendars, and get updates on the go.
Sync Team Calendars, Reward Loyalty, and Automate Blackout Periods
📅 Complete plan users can now sync existing/shared team leave calendars with Vacation Tracker and keep tabs on updated leave information like approved leaves.
🎁 Our latest feature, Seniority Entitlement automation, enables you to automatically reward employees who have been with your company for a certain number of years with extra vacation days.
🚫 We’ve launched the Blackout Period automation, allowing you to set restrictions on leave for either all users or specific team members during certain periods, align these restrictions with specific types of leave, and more.
📥 Administrators can now smoothly transfer their current leave records to Vacation Tracker by utilizing the template provided on the Import Page.
Pick Your Time Format, Set PTO Caps, and Manage Brought Forward Settings
⏰ Users now have the option to display time in AM/PM or 24-hour format when booking time off.
🧳 We’re introducing PTO accrual cap which is required by law in certain locations. Accrual Cap limits how much PTO an employee can accrue during a specific period.
📋 As an Administrator, you can now apply brought forward settings to previous and future years.
Easily Grant Extra Days Off with Entitlements by Role
👤 We’ve launched the ‘Entitlements by Role’ feature, which allows you to easily grant extra days off to specific team members, utilizing the labels you have already created.
Plan Leave with AI, Track Balances Instantly, and Explore New PTO Features
🤖 Use AI to plan your vacation! Instead of the usual “Request Leave” command in Microsoft Teams, our AI chatbot lets you chat and detail your time-off plans for easier leave booking.
🗓 Discover your updated leave balance instantly! See the effect of potential leave requests on your PTO quota directly on the dashboard as you make them.
💡 Explore features like Blackout Periods and Seniority Entitlement! These advanced tools add more automation to your PTO tracking. Reach out to our Sales team for details.
Flexible Accruals and Advance Leave Requests
📅 Choose accruals at the period’s start (e.g., in May for May 1-31 accruals) or traditionally, at month’s end or next month’s start.
🏖️ Introducing advance accrual-based leave requests! Team members can now request leave in advance, based on anticipated accrued days.
Stay on Top of Leave Requests, Set Up OOO Replies, and Join Us in Planting Trees
📩 Approvers will now be reminded up to 3 times about pending leave requests. If left unattended, these requests will expire.
🏖️ You can now set up automatic OOO (Out of Office) replies for both Gmail and Outlook. Just configure or use our preset templates, and let us handle the rest while you relax.
🌲 Our ongoing partnership with One Tree Planted is thriving. We have planted 9323 until now.
Vacation Tracker is now SOC 2 Certified
🔒 We are thrilled to announce a significant milestone in our commitment to security: We have passed our SOC 2 Type 2 audit and have received our report from our auditor.
📅 Improved Calendar Integration: Our recent update allows users to connect personal Outlook and Google Calendars for synchronized leave information across platforms.
View Leaves with Wallchart and Auto-Import Holidays for Future Years
Reviewing scheduled leaves using Wallchart is now available! This option gives Admins and Approvers another way to view upcoming leaves and holidays for users!
Say goodbye to importing future holidays manually! We’ve introduced an option to auto-import holidays for future years! Enabling this option will automatically populate holidays for the upcoming years.
Easily Add New Users, Pro-rate Quotas, and Join Our Monthly Office Hours
Adding new users is a breeze on our new Import Users page! This will give Admins more visibility and options when adding new users to the account.
Pro-rating quotas for new employees is now available! Admins importing new users will be able to automatically pro-rate the quotas for new users who start mid-year.
We want to hear from you, that’s why we’ve introduced Vacation Tracker Office Hours! This monthly webinar aims to share expert tips and information about Vacation Tracker, where you can ask us questions in real time! Look out for future announcements to see when our next session is!
Switch Platforms with Ease – New Option in General Settings for Admins
Experiencing a change of heart when it comes to our Email option? Clients who are using Vacation Tracker with their Email can now initiate an option to change platforms. Admins will see the Switch to Another Platform option on their General Settings page!
Set Half-Day Holidays and Track Changes with Company Logs
Admins can now set half-day holidays in their locations! This is certainly useful when celebrating long weekends!
Company Logs are now available for Admins to review! This page will list all changes made to the account, such as enabling leave policies, updating locations, adding holidays and importing users!
Set Custom Start Dates for Leave Quotas and Easily View Scheduled Leaves
New companies have the option to set a calculation start date in Vacation Tracker. This option will calculate previous leave quotas and brought forward days according to the specific date in the Settings section of the online dashboard!
We’ve added an option to see the calendar button to the leave requests sent to Approvers! This button allows Approvers to go to the online dashboard calendar view to see what other leaves and/or holidays are scheduled on or around the time of this request.
Language Preferences and Easy Admin Updates
Depending on your language preferences, Admins can now set the notifications in English or French! This setting can be configured on the Notifications page at any time!
For our Microsoft Teams users, we’ve released an update to the Add Users page. Here, you will see a quick breakdown of the number of users who have been imported from your workspace directory, and how many active users you have in your directory!
Lastly, a Brought Forward column has been added to our Leave Balance Report. Admins can now easily see how many days have been brought forward for each leave type and each user!
Updated Leave Quotas and Hourly Leave Requests Now Available
We’ve updated the format for the quotas on user profile pages! Quotas are now shown in days and hours so users have a crystal-clear picture of their leave allotments.
Hourly leaves can now be set in Leave Policies! This improvement is part of our Complete plan, and allows users to request leaves by the hour. :chocolate_bar: Admins can now assign Brought Forward Expiry dates to Leave Policies instead of locations!
Submit Past Leave Requests, French Language Support, and Easy Email Sign-Up
Users can now submit requests for past leaves! Gone are the days when Approvers had to add previous sick days or paid time off for their users. Admins can now enable the option for users to Edit and Submit previous leaves.
Can you say…Bonjour Vacation Tracker? We are delighted to offer you the option to change the online dashboard language to French!
Lastly, for everyone who does not use Microsoft Teams; Slack or Google Workspace, you can now sign up for Vacation Tracker using your email address! The Email sign up process is simple, quick, and allows you to invite users via email, regardless of their email domain! This integration is a new independent integration that is used on its own, without mixing with other integrations such as Microsoft Teams or Slack.
Add Approved Leave to Your Calendar, Employee ID Field, and CSV/Excel Export Options
📆 We have introduced the “Add to Calendar” button which can now add your approved leave in your private calendar as an event. You can then edit and customize this event as you please (eg: setting yourself as busy or away during your leave).
📝 The Employee ID field is a special gift for you, HR and Accounting people! You can now enter the employee ID from your HR system or Payroll system for each user within Vacation Tracker. This way, you can easily export our leave information and organize or import it according to the ID.
💾 Last but definitely not least, no more unnecessary conversions from the CSV format to Excel, we give you the option for both. You can now export your reports in either the CSV format or the Excel format.
Brought Forward Limits and Expiry Dates on User Profiles, Plus a New Calendar Tab for Microsoft Teams
ℹ️ We have added the brought forward limit and expiry date on the user’s profile page, in order to give more information to the users about their leave balances.
📆 Our Microsoft Teams users now have an additional tab they can add to Microsoft Teams (besides the Overview tab), the Calendar tab, which includes all of our calendar information and filters within Microsoft Teams.
New Features and Email-Only Sign-In Coming Soon
Welcome to 2022! 🎉 💫. We sincerely hope it’s the year when we will all say goodbye to Covid and hello to a lot more vacation time and traveling 🏝 !
This year, we plan to introduce a few exciting new options from our roadmap, as well as improvements and features for our current integrations. One of the options we are currently working on is the e-mail only sign-in: an option to sign up with Vacation Tracker using any e-mail address and to allow users to create their own accounts using their e-mail addresses. If this is something you may be interested in, feel free to join our waitlist by going to: app.vacationtracker.io and clicking on Connect with Email.
Custom Notifications, Slack Integration, and New Features
Customize notifications by location, department, and labels. Send them through channels or email, and create multiple versions of notifications.
Automatically set your Slack status and emoji based on your leave type.
Admins can input users’ starting leave balances from previous systems or edit first-year balances.
Track changes like location updates and settings that impact user leave balances.
Enhancements to the overall dashboard and better Dark Mode for clearer visibility.
Interactive Heat Map, Updated Overview, and Calendar List View
🔥 We introduced a clearer and a more interactive heat map on the home page. We also updated the overview for today and scheduled leaves along with the new filters mentioned earlier in our Changelog.
📆 Additionally, we also added a new calendar view (a list view) to our calendar page for all of you left-brained users! Don’t worry, right-brainers, the original visual view is still available.
Accruals, Scheduled Reports, and User Labels
Accruals – Allowing you to automatically prorate leave amounts for each leave type!
Scheduled Reports – Send automated reports to specific departments to help keep track of user leave information!
Labels – Categorize your users for more efficient tagging and filtering!
Billing Page Update – Along with our great new plan, we also introduced a new billing page that allows you to easily switch between our plans and allows you to switch between our annual and monthly payment options.
Easily View Leaves by Location, Department, and More
Take a step back and enjoy the view…using our new filters feature. Users are able to filter upcoming leaves based on location and department. These options can also be filtered on the dashboard calendar view.
Edit User Names, Quick Leave Policy Setup, and Announce Vacation Tracker to Your Team
As long as you have the Admin power within Vacation Tracker, you can edit the user’s name within the user profile page!
In order to connect leave types and policies even quicker, we have introduced a new wizard that allows you to assign a location or multiple locations and a leave policy right on the Leave Types page. You can edit or configure the leave policies on the Locations page as always!
Once you have completed your Vacation Tracker setup, you can now announce Vacation Tracker to all of the active users by using our Announce option on the online dashboard.
Introducing Google Workspace Integration for Vacation Tracker!
We are happy to introduce our third, highly requested, independent Vacation Tracker integration: the Google Workspace integration!
After weeks of hard work and testing, our team decided to start off the summer season by introducing the beta version of our Google integration. If you have a Google Workspace account and are looking for a leave tracking tool for your organization, look no further.
Leave Balance Report for Monthly Tracking and Easy Company Name Update
As an HR tool, we had to introduce a new option for all of you HR people, that will make your monthly reporting even easier. The Leave Balance Report (Last Month option) gives you a monthly breakdown of the overall leave amounts given to users and the amount taken by users, during that specific month.
Did you set your company name as “John-TEST” when you started with Vacation Tracker and figured “I’ll update it later”.. well, until now you couldn’t! Now you can :). You can easily update the company name under the General settings option within the online dashboard. This update will not affect your billing information.
Dark Mode is Back! 🎉 Now Available for Slack and Microsoft Teams Users
Introducing Dark Mode! You can easily activate dark mode by using the toggle switch at the top right-hand corner of your online dashboard.
New User Profile, 2 Half Days in 1, Easy Location Transfers, and End Date for Contracts
Introducing 2 half days in 1! Some of you Slack users may say “Didn’t you already introduce this feature?” and we would say “Yes!” we loved it so much we are re-introducing it in Vacation Tracker 2.0 (the delay was for dramatic effect). You are now able to add 2 half days in 1 day (as long as the hours do not overlap).
Moving users from location to location has never been easier (on our system), you can now easily transfer a user from one location to another without the upcoming leave information being canceled.
Last but not least, we have added an end date option which can easily be activated if you would like to assign end dates of contracts for specific or all users. Once the end date is reached, the user(s) will be deactivated and will not be able to request leave.
Vacation Tracker 2.0 for Slack - A Holiday Gift for Your Team
We are proud to introduce our second biggest project since the launch of Vacation Tracker and our Microsoft Teams Integration, Vacation Tracker 2.0 for Slack 🥳. This holiday season we decided to give our Slack teams the best gift of all, change. And who doesn’t love change!
Vacation Tracker 2.0 includes many features requested by our teams such as locations and editing of leaves and an improved design of our online dashboard!
Edit Your Leaves and Reset Quotas Based on Employee Start Date
You are now able to edit leaves within Vacation Tracker. Regular Users are able to edit their leave information for pending and upcoming leaves. Admins and Approvers are able to edit past, current and future leave information for regular Users.
Another popular request: leave quota being reset based on the employee start date. You are now able to choose between resetting the leave quota based on the Accounting Year (Fiscal Year) or the Employee Start Date.
Introducing Vacation Tracker for Microsoft Teams - A New Era of Leave Tracking
We are very happy to introduce one of our biggest “projects” since the launch of our Slack integration: Vacation Tracker for Microsoft Teams 🥳.
Vacation Tracker has a fresh and improved design, with some brand new features such as Locations, Leave Policies, and Microsoft Teams tab!
Introducing Doropomo: Your Pomodoro Time-Management Tool ⏳
Our Marketing team was feeling extra innovative and came up with another great tool to help you track your breaks, distractions and tasks! Introducing Doropomo 🎉.
You can apply the Pomodoro method 🍅 with a few simple commands and spend time more efficiently and effectively: https://vacationtracker.io/doropomo
Out of Office Generator - Perfecting Your Auto Replies for Vacation
Welcome our very own Out of Office generator! It’ll help you generate that perfect auto reply. Saving you time while helping you brighten someone’s day with a funky email: https://vacationtracker.io/ooo-generator/
Expired Leave Status and Revamped Error Messages
We have created a new status “Expired” for requested leaves that have not been approved nor denied by approvers; therefore, the leave request has expired. The status can be found in the history of leaves on the profile page of any user!
We are also in the process of revamping some of our error messages to include more detail and explanation to make any delays efficiently resolved for our users!
Two Half Days in One and Improved Export Reports for Teams
Due to the current global situation, we decided to expedite and release the “Two Half Days in One” feature for all of our teams, which will allow your team to include two half-day leaves in one day. For example, you will now be able to add a half-day for Working Remotely and a half-day for a PTO leave.
We also revamped our Export page for both report types: the Leave History report and the Employee Leave Status report. The Leave History Report can now include a status column for approved, denied and approved and denied leaves. The Employee Leave Status report has also been updated to show information for the previous, current and upcoming year.
Push Notifications and Decimal Point Editing for Custom Leave Amounts
We introduced the push button for daily and weekly notifications on both the general (global) and team notifications! You are now able to send either of the notifications outside of the scheduled time.
We have also re-vamped our notifications by re-organizing the text and introducing emojis to represent different teams!
Finally, you can now manually edit the half day amount of custom leaves on each user’s page by using a decimal point! (We also introduced a small bug that didn’t allow any decimal points shortly after, but that was fixed very quickly 🙂 )
Hide Leave Type Toggle, Bulk Activation, Team List for Approvers, and Calendar View Upgrades
Adding the frequently requested “Hide Leave Type” toggle which allows leave types to be hidden from the Calendar, the Dashboard and all notifications. Only admins, approvers and the user requesting the leave are able to see the leave name.
Newly created bulk activation and deactivation feature will allow activation/deactivation of more than one user at once. This option can be found on our Team Members page.
We didn’t forget about the approvers! We have added the requested team list for approvers which can be found under the Manage Requests on the left-hand side on the approver dashboard view.
We have also upgraded our calendar view setting to affect other areas once a user changes the view to Monday to Sunday or Sunday to Saturday. The view will now affect the export page, adding holidays and adding leaves.
Added the “Who is Off” portion on the requests sent to approvers/admins letting them know who is also away from the same team, on the day requested.
Improved the “Add Leave” button on the admin dashboard but separating adding a leave for users and requesting a leave as an admin.
The user profile is now accessible by clicking on the image on our Vacation Tracker dashboard.
We also added the “My Status” button on Slack so that users are able to see a summary of remaining and used days just like they can on the dashboard.
Control Leave Limits and Make “Add Reason” Field Mandatory or Optional
🎉 Attention admins, you are now able to allow/prevent your team members to go over their allowed leave limit while creating or editing any leave.
📝 We also introduced the option to make the “Add Reason” field either mandatory or not mandatory, depending on your preferences.
Calendar Feed for All Team Members and Warning for Exceeding Leave Limits
🗓️ The calendar feed is now available for all team members (not only admins), on the Calendar page!
🔔 We also created a warning message in case a team member requested leave days over the allowed limit.
Separation of Admin and Approver Roles, Request Management in Slack and Dashboard
🎉 Happy to finally break the dependency of the approval role by dividing the admin and approver roles into two! Meaning the approver does not have to be an admin to have approver privileges.
📝 The approver will see a list of all approved/denied requests with the ability to cancel them.
🛎️ The approver will also receive leave requests in Slack and the dashboard and will be able to approve/deny them.
💌 Team member onboarding messages have been updated for easier communication.
💬 Admins can now announce Vacation Tracker to their team from the dashboard. If an admin decides to skip the option to announce Vacation Tracker during the signup flow, they can do it later on from the dashboard by using the announce icon in upper right corner of the screen.
Onboarding Videos, New Dashboard Links, PTO Quota, and Improved Notifications and Reports
🎥 Onboarding videos have been added to the signup flow.
🔘 Toggles have been replaced with dorpdowns in the export tab.
📃 The reports have been renamed to “Leave history report” and “Employee leave statuses”.
0️⃣ Administrators can now put 0 for PTO on an employee profile. The employee is still eligible to ask for a a PTO but the admin will be notified about the employee’s quota.
📃 Individual URLs for dahsboard tabs have been added. You can now easily send a url of a VT dashboard tab to your team members.
📨 Notifications have been updated for a better overview of upcoming leaves.
📅 We’ve improved how half-days for non-PTO leave types appear in the calendar.
🎬 Explainer videos have been added to the signup flow for a better understanding.
🏝️ We’ve improved how leave types are displayed in the Slack bot.
📝 The resubscribe page has been modified for a better overview.
Leave Type Export, Custom Workweek, Overhauled Slack Request Form, Half-Day Allowance, and Dashboard Improvements
🗃️A second type of export has been added to Vacation Tracker. Administrators can now export a summary of leave types for each employee individually.
🗓️ Admins can now set a custom workweek for the entire company, or for individual employees. This can be done through the administrator dashboard or during the signup flow. For more information visit our FAQ.
ℹ️ The request form in Slack has had a major overhaul for a better overview.
☀️ Admins can now allow half-days for all leave types. Simply select the leave type you want to allow this for, and activate the “Allow half-days” switch.
📝 Textual adjustments to the administrator dashboard for a better understanding.
View Team Leave Requests Before Approval and Google Calendar Sync for Teams
💬 Admins can now see which team members are on leave on the requested day before approving a leave for a new team member.
🗓 Admins can now sync Google Calendar only for their team.
Customizable Default Leave Type, User Deactivation, VAT Info on Invoices
📆 Until now, the default leave type was named “Vacations, days off and half days”. Now, the administrators can rename the default leave type any way they want.
👥 Users can now be deactivated through the “Team Members” page on the administrator dashboard.
💳 You can now add VAT info to invoices, trough the VAT field on the Billing page.
💬 Special offer information has been added to invoices.
🗓 History on user profiles has been improved for easier overview.
Custom Notifications for Teams, Dark Mode, Improved Layouts, and Faster Team Members Page
📮 Administrators can now set daily/weekly notifications for each team separately.
👤 We’ve added dark mode to the Vacation Tracker dashboard.
👥 The layout of the team members page has been adjusted for better organization.
🖌 The layout of the teams’ page and the team overview page has been improved.
Rollover Expiry Date, Switzerland Holidays, Default Half Days, Direct Time Off Requests, Updated Signup Flow, and Slack Sync Improvements
🗓 Rollover expiry date has been introduced to Vacation Tracker. Admins can now set a custom date when transferred days will expire.
🇨🇭 We’ve added Switzerland to import holidays list.
🗓 Half days are now activated by default. Current users have previously activated half days through Settings. New teams won’t have to activate it manually, as it is now activated by default.
📅 We’ve added a “Add Days Off” button on each user’s profile, so admins could request time off directly from their profiles.
💬 Slack messages with request responses have been rewritten for easier communication.
👥 We’ve updated our signup flow for easier navigation.
🗓 Administrators can now adjust vacation period reset dates, depending on the company’s vacation policy. The start/year-end date can be changed during the onboarding process, and in the “Settings” page in the administrator dashboard.
🚪 We’ve separated signup and login, so the users who aren’t admins can access the dashboard easily. All they have to do is confirm their identity in order to access the dashboard.
👥 If you’re not seeing some of your Slack users in Vacation Tracker, you can easily run synchronization again. You can find this option on the “Team Members” page.
⚙ Until recently, Slack admins were configured in Settings – Employee Settings, however, this has been improved for easier navigation. You can now easily change each team member’s status in the “Team Members” page.
Selective Slack User Import, Inactive User Management, Billing Updates, and Improved Leave Type Display
👥 Previously, all team members of a Slack organization were automatically imported. Now, you can select which Slack users will be using Vacation Tracker.
👨💻 Slack admins are no longer required to be Vacation Tracker admins as well. You can always configure these settings in Settings – Employee Settings.
⌨ Admins can now add/remove multichannel Slack guests from a Vacation Tracker organization. Previously, guest users were not imported into Vacation Tracker. Now, certain guest users (multi-channel guest users only) will be able to use Vacation Tracker as well.
❌ We’re introducing “Inactive” users to Vacation Tracker. Inactive users are the ones who haven’t been important during the Vacation Tracker onboarding process, or if they have been removed manually. Admins can view their history and of course, activate them if needed.
👁️🗨️ We’ve redesigned the Team Members page for a much better overview of each team member’s information and status (Active, Inactive and Deleted).
✔ Admins can automatically import new Slack team members to Vacation Tracker through General Setting in the administrator dashboard.
💸 Billing updates – Since Vacation Tracker charges customers based on the number of active users in an organization, billing will be impacted now that adding/removing users from the Team Members page is possible. Vacation Tracker will now charge customers based on the maximum number of concurrent users of any month.
🔭 We’ve improved the way leave types are displayed in daily and weekly notifications.
🏂 The dashboard and the Slack bot updates have been provided for teams with the unlimited vacations policy.
ℹ The team member page has been improved for team users and admins with unlimited vacation policy by hiding the redundant info’s.
Slack Chatbot in Private Channels, Updated Dashboards, Leave Type Display Enhancements, and Credit Card Layout Improvements
🤖 You can now add the Vacation Tracker chatbot to private channels in Slack. To choose a channel, please go to “Settings” on the dashboard.
🗓 The dropdown menu on the dashboard and the calendar page have been updated for easier overview.
📅 The remaining number of days is now displayed on each team member’s profile on the team member page.
💳 Credit card information and layout have been updated for easier overview.
💬 The wording for unlimited teams Slack messages has been updated.
🏝 We’ve improved how leave types on a team member’s profile view are displayed.
📅 A pop up has been added to the calendar, displaying a reason for taking time off. This feature is available only for the administrators.
🗓 Calendar colors have been updated for easier overview.
📃 A preview of the Daily and Weekly team notifications has been added.
🎨 Leave type color configuration has been updated, and all colors are now displayed on the calendar legend.
Edit "Employee Since" Date, View Available Days for Current and Next Year, and Half-Day Value for Leave
📋 Admins can now edit the “Employee since” date on a team member’s profile.
🗓 Users and admins can now see the number of available days in the current (2018) and the next year (2019).
📆 Admins can enter a value for a half day (0.5) in user’s available days (current and next year)
Request Same-Day Time Off, Rollover Policies, Improved Team Member Display, and Customizable Leave Types
📅 Users can now request the current day as a day off for any leave type.
💬 Predefined reasons when requesting a day off have been removed.
🗓 We’ve added rollover policies, allowing admins to transfer unused vacation days to next year. There are three options available: no transfer, transfer everything and transfer a specific number of days.
✔ A confirmation message has been added when a user requests time off via dashboard.
📑 The order of tabs in “Settings” has been changed for easier navigation.
👥 We’ve changed how team members are displayed in the “Team members” page for a better overview.
📮 Personalized info messages have been added on each team members’ dashboard.
🗺 We’re proudly introducing the concept of Leave Types. Administrators can easily configure the organization’s leave types through the “Settings” page. The default leave type is “Vacations and Days Off”. All other leave types ranging from Sick Day, Conference, Working Remotely, PTO, Paternity Leave, Jury Duty and more, can be configured by the administrators. And you can have up to 9 completely customizable leave types besides vacations and days off.
Half-Day Requests, Team Deletion, Enhanced Notifications, CSV Export, and Billing Coupon Code Integration
🗑 Administrators can now delete teams that do not have any members.
📣 Administrators now have the option to deny a request with reason on the dashboard as well. Previously, it was allowed only through the Vacation Tracker bot.
🗓 We’ve changed how holidays for multiple teams are displayed in the calendar for easier navigation. Now, it’s even easier to track which teams are out of the office.
📱Multiple improvements have been made for the mobile (Signup flow, Breadcrumbs, Tooltip, and Dashboard)
🕤 Another cool feature has been added to Vacation Tracker. Admins can allow their teams to request a half day off and are able to see the exact day and timing in which their team members will be absent. Find this feature on Settings -> General -> Activate.
🕓 Team members can now request a half-day off through Vacation Tracker bot or dashboard.
💰You can now enter your coupon code during signup for an additional free period on Vacation Tracker.
🗓 By clicking on a half-day request for a specific employee in the calendar, a pop-up will appear showing the requested time. The reason for taking a half-day is visible only to admins.
🎨A new color has been introduced to the calendar which indicates that an employee has taken a half day off.
🖌And we’ve added a legend in the top left corner that now shows specific colors for holidays, days off and a half-days off.
📆 We’ve also added the ability to filter the calendar by teams.
💻 The Vacation Tracker signup flow has been optimized, and we’ve added a product tour to our dashboard.
🗑 We’ve removed the “People who took vacation” tab in the dashboard for a better overview and easier navigation.
🗃 You can now export a list of vacations to a CSV file.
📧 We love hearing your feedback. And now, you have the option to leave your email address in order to get a reply.
💬 Daily notifications have been added. (A new type of notifications which now include: A summary of the team members who are off today and holidays for that day; A summary of the team members who are off tomorrow and holidays for that day; Buttons that link to the dashboard and calendar)
🕛 You can now send multiple vacation requests at the same time. (Send a consecutive request without waiting for the first request to be approved.)
📣 We’ve improved the way notifications are sent upon cancelling a vacation. All affected team members will be notified on time.
⏳ You can now view your previously approved vacations in your history.
❌ Administrators now have the ability to remove past vacations.
💳 A coupon code field has been added to the billing tab – allowing you to use your coupon before the first paid month.
💳 The coupon code field has been added to the re-activation page as well.
🔧 We’ve added tooltips in the team member’s page in the dashboard for easier customization.
Improved Year Management, Easier Calendar Navigation, Video Tutorial, Slack Bot Access, and Demo Scheduling
⏰ Working around the clock has paid off. We have successfully improved how days off for the next year are managed. 2019, here we come!
📝 You can now customize the number of days off per employee until the end of the current year.
📆 Improved calendar on the dashboard patiently awaits for you! We have added buttons for easier calendar navigation between years.
🧐 A short video tutorial has been provided on our homepage which describes how easy it is to request a vacation through Vacation Tracker.
🔐 Team Members can now install the Vacation Tracker bot in Slack. You no longer need to be a Slack admin for your organization to install Vacation Tracker for your team.
📝 Now it is easier to to change the end date of your vacation since we’ve renamed show date picker button to choose end date in Slack.
📆 Interested to see how Vacation Tracker works, and will it fit your team needs? You can now schedule a demo, through our landing page vacationtracker.io/request-a-demo/
Dashboard Access for All Users, Vacation Overlap Alerts, New Features in Slack Bot, Customizable Workweek, and Transparency in Billing
🔐 Wouldn’t it be cool to allow everyone to see our nice dashboard? We just did it! You can now access the dashboard and see your profile, calendar and future days off even as a regular user.
📝 Text field for a reason is more cool than buttons, that’s why we added it to the requesting day off flow in Slack.
💬 It’s useful to see how many days off you have remaining when you are sending the request, so we added that info to our Slack bot response.
⚠️ Vacation Tracker will notify you for vacation overlapping when you try to book a new vacation on the same dates as another vacation you already booked or a holiday. This works for both Slack and the dashboard.
📝 You can now see a link to our changelog from the dashboard, so you can track all changes we are applying to our system.
❓You can also see the link to our FAQ from the dashboard.
📅 As teams in some parts of the world have working week from Sunday to Thursday, and as we want to support all awesome teams that are using Slack, we added an option where you can choose if your working week is Monday-Friday or Sunday-Thursday. At the moment, this is only on account level, and you can set it in the onboarding or from the Settings in the Dashboard.
⛵️You can now add one day vacations via our Slack bot!
☎️ If admin adds a vacation through the Dashboard, user and other admins will now receive a notification in Slack. This way you’ll stay on top of your company vacations.
📆You can now see your existing vacations in Slack bot calendar while requesting a new vacation or a day off.
🎟 Sometimes we want to reward our awesome users for being awesome, that’s why we added an ability to apply coupon codes through the dashboard.
💸 As we want to be as transparent as we can, we want our users to know when is the next invoice and how much will they pay. That’s why we added next invoice section to the Billing tab of the Settings. This will also allow you to see if the promo code is applied to your next invoice.
🔎 You can now filter the Dashboard home page by team.
🤗 When new users join your Slack, they didn’t know about Vacation Tracker, but now we’ll send them a friendly message to let them know how to use the bot. To disable this feature, see the Settings section in the Dashboard.
🤩 Our rating/feedback form has support for dialogs now.
Rejection Reasons, Enhanced Slack Functionality, Customizable Time Formats, Admin Features, and Improved Navigation
❌ Now you can add that reason! When rejecting a vacation request, a popup with text field for a rejection reason will appear and allow you to explain your rejection.
💬 Sometimes you want to request a vacation with a short explanation. Now you can do that directly from Slack.
🔙 Now you can easily go back when navigating through the chatbot options using buttons.
⏰ Admins can now change the default time format. You can choose DD/MM/YYYY, MM/DD/YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD. If you need more time formats, let us know!
🧐 It’s always important to know if anyone else from the same team is off when approving a vacation request. We know it is! So you no longer need to leave Slack to get that information, as of now, Vacation Tracker will send you that info with vacation requests.
🔃 If you have a large team, front page and team page lists were too long. So we replaced the scroll in scroll feature with pagination.
🚀 Trying to find the URL of our dashboard can be annoying, so we added “Open Dashboard” button to Slack slash command for admin users. You can now click on the button and open the dashboard.
🛸 Sometimes, approving the vacation request requires more info. That’s why we added “Go to Dashboard” button next to “Approve” and “Reject” buttons in Slack. You can now access the dashboard with a single click when approving the request.
🔭 At the end of the month, it’s not enough to see who is off this month, so we added “Next Week” and “Next Month” buttons to /vacation command.
☎️ We added a new notification for admins that will be sent when someone cancels a vacation.