Availability

How Hotpot tracks availability.

Availability is Hotpot's term for a user's ability to be a part of an on-call schedule. The Smart Scheduler uses availability to determine who can fulfill the needs of a given schedule's stint.

Unavailability is the lack of availability, a term sometimes encountered within Hotpot or this documentation. It's a shortcut for saying the person is not available at a given time.

Managing availability

Users default to being available in Hotpot. To mark a time as being unavailable, a record must be added, setting the time range. You can do this by clicking "Add new" at the top of Hotpot and selecting "Unavailability."

Adding unavailability

Give your unavailability a name. This should be publicly visible, like "Doctor appointment," and then enter the time. We encourage you to give yourself space on both sides of an availability to account for any last-minute changes, traffic, or the like.

Assuming there are no conflicts, Hotpot will record your unavailability and protect it as the schedule develops!

Conflicts

If you enter an unavailable time in which you are already on-call, Hotpot will notice this and prompt you for resolution. You may, for example, notice you are on-call and choose another time. If that's not possible, you can instead use Hotpot's in-application prompts to solve the conflicts, scheduling a teammate to cover you or even leaving the time unassigned so that others can jump in and help.

Common questions

How far out should you enter unavailability?

Short answer: When you know!

Longer answser: The default settings for Hotpot schedules build schedules 1 month into the future, so any time more than that is great! Additionally, Hotpot will prompt you in-app as to the best time based on your schedule settings.

What if everyone is out at the same time?

Hotpot will flag this situation with as much notice as the schedule allows. This will allow the team to resolve any problems.

Additionally, Hotpot will do the following to help spot issues:

• A calendar-based UI allows browsing future availability

• Users are shown teammate's availability when entering their own, helping to spot conflicts ahead of time.