creating blackout periods (individual and mass)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Important Reminders
• Creating Mass Blackout Dates for Reporters
• Creating Blackout Dates for Individual Reporters

Important Reminders

• If your template launches weekly and any one blackout period lasts from a Monday through the following Sunday, the reporter at issue will not be prompted to submit a sheet during that time.
  
  
• If your template launches bi-weekly and any one blackout period lasts from a Monday through two Sundays from that Monday, the reporter at issue will not be prompted to submit a sheet during that time.
  
  
• If you are using the Fifteenth & The Last Day of the Month schedule, and any one blackout period lasts from the 1^st through the 15^th of the month or through the 16^th through the last day of the month, the reporter at issue will not be prompted to submit a sheet during that time.

Creating Mass Blackout Dates for Reporters

Here’s how to add and remove blackout periods from two or more Reporters simultaneously:

1. On the left, in your Mission Control, click Reporters, Staff, & Sites.
   
   
2. On the right, click Manage reporter accounts.
   
   
3. On the right, use the More menu to select Mass-Update Blackout Dates.
   
   
4. The next page will walk you through the four steps to setting up or removing a blackout period.
   
   Step 1: Select the Timesheet Template at issue.
   
   Step 2: Tell the Impact Suite if you are adding or removing a period from Reporters’ accounts.
   
   Step 3: Set your blackout period’s start and end dates. 
   
   Step 4: Click Display all relevant Reporters below to choose which Reporters’ accounts should be updated.
   
   
   You’ll see that each Reporter’s name is hyperlinked. Click that link to see and make modifications to that person’s current settings.
   
5. Once you click the Update Selected Reporters button at the bottom of Step 4, you’ll be asked to review and confirm your selection. If everything looks good, follow the prompts to update the selected accounts.
   
   
6. On the following page, you’ll see a confirmation of which Reporters’ accounts were updated.

Creating Blackout Dates for Individual Reporters

After you assign a Template to a reporter, you’ll have an option of creating blackout dates for their service term.  You'll want to create blackout dates under the following conditions:

1. If the person is beginning to serve after the Start Date of your Template, you'll want to create blackout dates from the start date through the person's first day so that the person is not prompted to retroactively fill out sheets for the time when they were not in the program.
   
   

2. If the person will not be serving with you through your Template’s End Date, you'll want to create blackout dates so that the person is never prompted to submit sheets after their term of service ends.
   
   

3. If you know the person will not be serving for a week or more, we also encourage you to create blackout dates for that period so that the reporter does not have to submit timesheets unnecessarily.

Here's how to create blackout dates for each person:

1. On the left, in your Mission Control, click Reporters, Staff, & Sites.
   
   

2. On the right, click Manage reporter accounts.
   
   

3. Click on the name of the reporter you would like to update.
   
   

4. Find the Timesheets Settings panel like the one in the following image:

5. To make changes to this panel, click the Edit button. This pop-up window will open:

6. Click Set blackout dates.
   
   

7. In the window that is now displayed, next to Start Date, click select and pick the first date of the blackout period.

8. Next to End Date, click select and pick the last day of the blackout period.
   
   

9. You can then enter up to 19 additional periods.