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The Privacy page in absentify allows administrators to control how absence data and department calendars are shared across the organization. These settings ensure that sensitive information is only visible to the right users while allowing flexibility for operational needs.

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Privacy & permissions

Here are the configurable privacy settings and their implications:

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Other departments

Toggle description: When activated, employees can view the calendars of all departments. If disabled, employees will only see the calendar of their own department.
  • Enabled: Users can view all department calendars. Invisible managers remain hidden from regular members even when this setting is on — admins, co-managers, and the invisible manager themselves are the exceptions.
  • Disabled: Users can only see their own department’s calendar.
This restriction does not apply to administrators, who always maintain full access to all calendars.
How to configure privacy the right way — hide the reason first, restrict a whole department only as an exception — is in the absence privacy guide. Use Only managers and approvers only when a team must not show absences at all.
Heads up — cross-department approvers and representativesIf you try to disable Other departments while some users still have an approver or representative in a different department, absentify shows a confirmation dialog before applying the change. The reason: those approvers and representatives would lose visibility of the absences they’re responsible for, which can break the approval flow.Reassign the affected approvers and representatives to users inside the same department first, then disable the toggle.

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Calendar view

Toggle description: Controls access to the full calendar view of a user’s absences.
  • Enabled: Displays a user’s absences for the entire year, similar to the “My calendar” feature in the main menu.
  • Disabled: Only the user, their manager/approver, and the administrator can access the user’s full calendar. This applies to every way of opening a colleague’s annual overview, including a direct link.

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Show absences in the past

Toggle description: Determines whether past absences are visible to all users.
  • Enabled: Past and future absences are visible to all users with the appropriate calendar access — depending on their user role and the workspace’s privacy settings. Absence details are shown, but the visibility of specific reasons depends on the leave type privacy settings.
  • Disabled:
    • Regular employees have full access to their own past and future absences. They can also view upcoming team absences if they have the appropriate calendar access, which depends on their user role and the workspace’s privacy settings.
    • An assigned approver can access the details of that request, including when it is in the past. Accepted representatives can see the requests they represent in the team timeline, but this does not provide general access to every past absence in the user’s calendar.
    • Current department managers can see past and upcoming absences of users in the departments they manage. There is no cutoff based on when the manager role was assigned.
Admins can always see all leave details of all users, past and present, regardless of when their role was assigned and whether or not the toggle is activated.

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Retroactive absence management by department manager

Toggle description: Grants department managers permission to manage absences in the past, similar to administrators.
  • Enabled: Department managers can both cancel absence requests that have already started or occurred in the past and create new absence requests in the previous fiscal year for employees in their department.
  • Disabled: Both retroactive cancellation and creating absences in the previous fiscal year remain exclusive to administrators. Managers can create requests in the current fiscal year and the next fiscal year.
Regular employees can only cancel their own future absences and create absences up to 30 days in the past, regardless of the toggle setting. All cancellations trigger an email notification or Teams Bot message to relevant parties, ensuring transparency.

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Summary of user roles and permissions

Here’s how the different privacy and visibility settings interact with user roles in absentify:

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Regular user

Default permissions
  • Can always see their own absences, including all details and reasons — this is never restricted by privacy settings.
  • Can view only their own leave allowances, such as vacation days or other allowance quotas.
  • Can cancel their own future absence requests, including both one-time and recurring absences.
  • Can create leave requests for the current fiscal year and one fiscal year into the future.
  • Receives notifications about their own absence requests based on their personal notification settings.
  • Can see the day and month of colleagues’ birthdays and anniversaries (but not the year or age), as long as those colleagues are visible to them based on the workspace’s privacy settings.
Conditional visibility based on privacy settings
  • Can see absences of other users based on the Other departments toggle:
    • If enabled, they can see absences of all users across the workspace.
    • If disabled, they can only see absences of users in their own department.
    • In both cases, absences of departments set to Only managers and approvers stay hidden, unless the user is an assigned approver or accepted representative for that request.
  • Can see past absences of other users only if the Show absences in the past setting is enabled. If disabled, only current and future absences are shown.
  • Visibility of absence reasons depends on both the Leave type privacy and Reason visibility settings:
    • If Leave type privacy is enabled, only assigned approvers, assigned representatives, department managers of the requestor, and admins can see the leave type.
    • If Leave type privacy is disabled and Reason visibility is enabled, only assigned approvers, assigned representatives, department managers, and admins can see the reason.
    • If Leave type privacy is disabled and Reason visibility is disabled, all users who can see the absence can also see the reason.

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Representative

General permissions
  • Has all the same rights as a regular user, as outlined above under the default permissions for the regular user.
Additional access for accepted representative assignments
Scope of access: The following rules only apply to requests for which the representative has accepted their representative assignment. If the representative declined the assignment for a request, they will no longer see the absence details for that request, and their rights revert to those of a regular user.
  • Can see the reason for absence, regardless of leave type privacy settings.
  • Can see the specific request they represent in the team timeline, including when it is in the past. This does not guarantee access through every calendar or detail view and does not grant general access to the user’s past-absence list when Show absences in the past is disabled.
  • Receives notifications for absence requests they are involved in, according to their personal notification settings.

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Approver

General permissions
  • Has all the same rights as a regular user, as outlined above under the default permissions for the regular user.
Additional access for assigned approvals
Scope of access: The following permissions apply only to approvers who are directly assigned to a specific request, and take effect from the moment the assignment is made.
In all other situations, the approver has the same permissions as a regular user.
  • Can process absence requests they are assigned to approve.
  • Can view the leave allowance quotas of users whose requests they are assigned to approve, in addition to their own.
  • Can see the details of requests they are assigned to approve. The assignment does not grant access to every absence of the requester or their department.
  • Can track the full approval process of requests they are involved in, including any edits or decisions made by others.
  • Receives notifications for absence requests they are involved in, according to their personal notification settings.

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Department manager

General permissions
  • Has all the same rights as a regular user, as outlined above under the default permissions for the regular user.
Additional access within managed departments
Scope of access: The following permissions apply only to the department(s) the user is explicitly assigned to manage, and take effect from the moment the manager assignment is made. In all other departments where they are simply a member (but not a manager), they retain the same permissions as a regular user.
  • Can view the leave allowances of employees in their department.
  • Department managers only receive notifications for absence requests they are directly involved in, based on their personal notification settings, but can also stay informed about other departmental absences by enabling the weekly absence summary.
  • Can see all absence details of employees in their department regardless of leave type privacy settings or the Show absences in the past setting.
  • Can view the full birth date as well as work anniversaries (including year and age) of employees in their own department via the Insights page.
Absence cancellation and past request permissions
  • Can cancel both one-time and recurring absence requests for employees in their department, including:
  • Can create absence requests for employees in their department in the previous fiscal year, if the Retroactive absence management by department manager setting is enabled. Without this setting, past start dates are blocked. Managers can use the current fiscal year and the next fiscal year in either case.
Important: Department managers cannot approve leave requests unless they are also assigned as the approver.

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Administrator

General permissions
  • Can create absences for any user in the workspace. The date picker offers historical years for which that user has allowance data, plus the current and next fiscal years.
  • Has full visibility over all absences across the entire workspace.
  • Has full control over user settings, including adding and removing users, and viewing/updating all profile and allowance settings.
  • Can cancel any pending or approved absence request, including requests that are past or ongoing. Cancelled and declined requests cannot be cancelled again.
  • Can approve a representative assignment on behalf of the designated representative.
  • Can approve leave requests on behalf of the assigned approvers.
  • Can override the representative requirement for an absence request.
  • Can skip the approval process when submitting a request and have the leave request approved immediately upon creation.
  • Can configure all privacy and system settings in the workspace.
  • Can export absence data for any time period since the workspace was created.
Additional permissions for Billing
  • With Billing Admin enabled:
    • Can edit all billing data, change the payment method, view past invoices, and see the current plan.
  • With Billing Admin disabled:
    • Cannot access the Billing or Upgrade tabs in the workspace settings.