The best way to avoid declines and schedule according to your team members' calendars is to ask your team members to block out any dates they will be gone for the time frame you're scheduling. Once they block out those dates, you'll be able to schedule with less fear of declines.
On the People page, your Teams are pinned to the People tab, making it convenient for you to quickly send them an email.
Note
You can also email people individually by selecting them from the People tab list or email a team from the Team page.
Select the envelope icon to email the people in these teams.
Tip
If you're not seeing My Teams, set up Filters to show your teams.
Use the blockout request email template to ask your team members to block out dates.
-
From the email template dropdown, choose the Planning Center Blockout Request template.
-
The default subject is Planning Center Blockout Request. You can choose to leave that as the subject or change it to something a little more specific.
-
Define the time frame you'll be scheduling to make sure people block out dates during that time frame.
Once you've added all the necessary information, click Send.
When people receive the blockout emails, they can choose to either set blockout dates or respond that they have no blockout dates planned.
Clicking Block Out Dates takes the person to a calendar on their profile where they can block out those dates.
Team Leaders who have opted to receive blockout emails will be notified of the person's response.
The following email informs the leader of blockout dates set by the team member.
The following email informs the leader that the team member did not set blockout dates.
If the person who sent the blockout request is not the Team Leader, that person will not receive an email response.
When you're ready to schedule, see who set their blockout dates by going back to view My Teams on the People page and viewing the Last Set Blockouts column.
Note
If you don't see the Last Set Blockouts column, use the column chooser button in the top right of the page to show the column.
Tip
Sort the list of people by the date they set blockouts by clicking Last Set Blockouts.
Notifications
Administrators can see any notifications related to them in the Admin Notifications Inbox. You can find this inbox at the top right corner of any page by selecting the bell icon.
If you have login permissions to Planning Center, you will be able to see both read and unread notifications and customize your notification settings.
Now that you've sent the blockout request and verified people blocked out dates, you're ready to schedule people.
If your team members are blocked out and you still want to schedule them, look at the reason. You can still schedule a team member if they have a blockout in place.