Covering for a colleague on leave
Choosing a cover
There are two places to choose a cover:
- On Leave Requests, press Record leave, pick the Employee, then a colleague under Covered by.
- On HR → Absence cover, press Assign cover next to the absence, or Change to pick someone else.
Only approved leave can be covered. The cover must be a colleague who is working in the same organisation, and a leave has one cover at a time. If you change the employee in Record leave, Covered by empties, so you choose again for the new person.
Who to pick
Some names in the Covered by list carry a tag. Hover over a name to see why.
- Highly recommended: they have the same role (job position) as the person on leave.
- Recommended: a different role, but in the same department.
- Not recommended: the person on leave can see group-wide parts of aiku (more than one organisation, or sections such as Goods, Masters, Supply chain or Sysadmin) and this colleague can't.
- No tag: they have nothing in common with the person on leave. You can still pick them.
Highly recommended names come first and Not recommended names come last.
Why "Not recommended"? The cover borrows what comes with the absent person's job positions. Access given to their user account directly, such as group-wide access, isn't lent. A cover who doesn't already have that access can't reach that part of the work.
What the cover gets
A notification
As soon as they are chosen, the cover is told: You are covering for Jane Smith, with the dates of the leave and "You have their permissions during this period."
The absent person's permissions
From the first day of the leave to the last, the cover can do everything the absent person's job positions allow, on top of their own permissions. There is nothing to tick: choosing the cover is enough. How job positions give permissions is in Changing what a user can see and do.
Their open tasks and tickets
While the leave runs, the cover is added as a collaborator on the absent person's open tasks and tickets. This includes ones assigned to the absent person during the leave. The cover stays on them after the leave, because they may have worked on them; take them off by hand if they are no longer needed.
One place to see the work
Tasks → Covering lists everyone you cover and what they left open: Tasks, Tickets, Chats, and Picking and packing. That last one means the delivery notes they were picking or packing; see Picking and packing a delivery note.
The Covering for panel in the right sidebar shows the same people, with how many items are left to handle and whether the cover is now or upcoming. A key icon means you have their permissions.
On Leave Requests, and on the Leave tab of an employee's page, each leave shows who it is Covered by. See Handling leave requests.
The Absence cover page
HR → Absence cover lists every approved absence that is running now or coming up, covered or not. It also lists absences that have ended and had a cover, so you can see who covered whom. The newest absences come first.
Ended absences show Ended and can no longer be changed. End cover stops a cover before the leave is over, and the borrowed permissions go at once.
When it starts and stops
- Cover chosen while the leave is already running: the permissions and the tasks and tickets come at once.
- Cover chosen before the leave starts: they come on the first day of the leave.
- After the last day: the permissions go.
- Leave edited or deleted, or cover changed or ended: the change happens at once.
aiku checks for leaves starting and ending every hour, so a start or an end takes effect within an hour of midnight. That midnight is UTC, not your local time. In Malaysia, for example, a cover gets access around 8 to 9 in the morning on the first day of the leave, and keeps it until around the same time the day after the leave ends.
Good to know
- A leave has one cover at a time.
- If you end a cover early, that absence won't appear in the list once the leave is over.
- The cover stays on the absent person's tasks and tickets after the leave.