The goal of blocking out time when you are on vacation, holiday, or out of office is to let others know you are not available. However, you may also want Reclaim to continue scheduling your Tasks and Habits during that period of time. Reclaim supports both of these use cases.
How do I tell Reclaim I'm out of the office?
Reclaim adapts in real time to changes on your schedule, so just do what you would normally do to block out your calendar for vacation. If you're new to Google Calendar, the process is simple:
First, create an all-day event if you want to show yourself as unavailable during that entire day.
Two important notes here:
1) Make sure to set the all-day event to Busy, otherwise the time will still show as available.
2) Make sure the event is created on the primary calendar of your main account email in Reclaim, or if you're adding it to a calendar that is being synced to that primary calendar using Calendar Sync, ensure that the "Sync all-day events" setting is turned on.
You can also create an Out of office event, which automatically appears if you type OOO into the title of an all-day event. These events will also be recognized by Reclaim as busy and will block out your availability.
When you block out your day with an all-day event marked as Busy:
Reclaim will automatically skip or reschedule Habits, Tasks, and Smart 1:1s.
Reclaim will detect the time as vacation and will count it in your stats.
If you have Slack Status Sync enabled, Reclaim will update your Slack status automatically while you are out of the office.
What if I'm just going to be OOO for a few hours?
Many people use Google Calendar's OOO event to mark when they need to step away from their desk for other commitments like an appointment. Reclaim will automatically and intelligently categorize OOO events as either:
Under 8 hours: Personal commitment
Over 8 hours: Vacation
This will keep your synced Slack status a more accurate reflection of your availability if you're, for example, need to take the kids to the doctor for a couple hours (vs. hanging out on the beach). Additionally, these categories will help streamline your work-life balance metrics in Stats.
What if I want Reclaim to still schedule my Habits and Tasks?
Sometimes you might want to have a heads-down day where you can still get time for your Habits and Tasks, but show yourself as unavailable to others for meeting. Some refer to this as a "No Meetings Day". To do this, simply add #reclaim_free to the title or description of the event. You can read more about that workflow here.