The Privacy settings section under Settings > General allows administrators to control how absence data and department calendars are shared across the organization. These settings ensure that sensitive information is only visible to the right people while allowing flexibility for operational needs.

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Privacy & permissions

Here are the configurable privacy settings and their implications:

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Other departments

Toggle description: When activated, employees can view the calendars of all departments. If disabled, employees will only see the calendar of their own department.
  • Enabled: Users can view all department calendars.
  • Disabled: Users can only see their own department’s calendar.
This restriction does not apply to administrators, who always maintain full access to all calendars.

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Calendar view

Toggle description: Controls access to the full calendar view of a user’s absences.
  • Enabled: Displays a user’s absences for the entire year, similar to the “My calendar” feature in the main menu.
  • Disabled: Only the user, their manager/approver, and the administrator can access the user’s full calendar.

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Show absences in the past

Toggle description: Determines whether past absences are visible to all users.
  • Enabled: Past and future absences are visible to all users, provided they have calendar access rights. Absence details are shown, but the visibility of specific reasons depends on the leave type privacy settings.
  • Disabled:
    • Regular employees can see upcoming team absences, provided they have calendar access rights, and can view their own past and upcoming absences.
    • Approvers and representatives can see both past and upcoming absences of the employees they are responsible for. Visibility of past absences starts from the date they were assigned the role – absences before that remain hidden.
    • Managers can see all past and upcoming absences, provided they have access to the users in the department. It does not matter when they were assigned the role.
Admins can always see all leave details of all users, past and present, regardless of when their role was assigned and whether or not the toggle is activated.

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Retroactive absence cancellation by department manager

Toggle description: Grants department managers permission to cancel past absence requests.
  • Enabled: Department managers can cancel absence requests that have already started or occurred in the past.
  • Disabled: This functionality remains exclusive to administrators.
Regular employees can only cancel their own future absences, regardless of the toggle setting. All cancellations trigger an email notification or Teams Bot message to relevant parties, ensuring transparency.

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Summary of user roles and permissions

Here’s how these privacy settings interact with user roles in absentify:

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Regular user

  • Can always see their own absences, including all details and reasons, regardless of the settings.
  • Can see absences of colleagues in their department:
    • Past absences: Only if Show absences in the past is enabled.
    • Reasons for absences:
      • If Leave type privacy is enabled, they only see “Absent” without details.
      • If Leave type privacy is disabled and Reason visibility is enabled, only approvers, department managers, and administrators can see the reason.
      • If Reason visibility is disabled, all users who can see the absence can also see the reason.
  • Can cancel their own future absences (all involved parties are notified via email or Teams Bot message).
  • Can only see their own leave allowances (e.g., vacation days or other quotas).

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Approver

  • Can see all details of absence requests they are assigned to approve, including the reasons for absences.
  • Can approve or decline absence requests assigned to them.
  • Cannot retroactively cancel or modify absence requests after approval.
  • Can track the full approval process of requests they are assigned to, including any subsequent changes by other approvers or administrators.
  • Can see the leave allowances (e.g., vacation days or other quotas) of employees whose absences they are assigned to approve, in addition to their own allowances.
  • Does not have access to absence requests or allowances for employees they are not assigned to approve.

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Department manager

  • Has all the same rights as a regular user.
  • Can see all absences of employees in their department, including:
  • Can see the leave allowances of all employees in their department, in addition to their own.
  • Can override decisions made by other approvers within their department. For example, they can modify or cancel absences already approved by others.
  • Can cancel absences within their department, including:
  • All actions by department managers, such as overriding approvals or cancellations, are fully tracked for transparency, and all relevant parties are notified via email or Teams Bot message.
  • Scope of access: A department manager only has visibility and permissions for employees in the department(s) they are explicitly assigned to manage. In other departments, they act as a regular user with no additional permissions.

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Administrator

  • Has full access to all absence data across all departments, including:
    • Reasons for absences: Always visible, regardless of the leave type settings.
    • Past and future absences: Fully visible and manageable across the entire organization.
  • Can see and manage the leave allowances of all employees across all departments.
  • Can override, modify, or cancel any absence request, regardless of its current status (e.g., approved, pending, or past).
  • Can configure privacy settings and all other system settings for the entire application.
  • Can track all actions and ensure transparency through full system logging and notifications to relevant parties.