Record an absence and plan around it
An absence in CongPlan is a period, and nothing else. There is no field for a reason and none for a note, so you never have to explain why you are away. It is still the most effective thing you can do against being scheduled while you cannot be there: automatic suggestions drop you, a planner assigning manually sees a warning, and hand-over requests do not reach you on those dates. This guide covers the entry itself and what it changes in planning. The feature page Absences (opens in new tab) is the short version for readers who do not use CongPlan yet.
An absence is only a period
Two properties follow from that, and both matter in practice:
- Nobody has to justify an absence, and nobody can read a reason out of one, because there is none to read.
- An absence is complete the moment the dates are right. There is no approval step and nothing to fill in afterwards.
If a new period overlaps one you already have, CongPlan says so instead of creating a duplicate. Every entry can be edited or deleted later, and an empty list simply reads No absences planned.
Record your own absence in three steps
Open Me > Absences. The personal hub already shows how many upcoming absences you have, and the command palette offers My absences and Add absence as direct shortcuts.
- Choose New Absence.
- Pick the period with From and To. For a single day, choose the same date twice.
- Save.
Your own absences then appear as a hatched period in your personal plan. They are also part of the calendar subscription, where each absence shows up as its own busy entry in the calendar app you already use.
What changes for automatic suggestions
For technical assignments, CongPlan proposes candidates itself. An absent person is excluded from those suggestions — not scored and not offered, neither by the rule-based suggestion nor by the AI-assisted one.
One case runs the other way. When a long absence is coming up — roughly four weeks or more, starting within the next two months — candidates get a bonus for the dates before it begins, so the suggestion nudges the planner to use that person once more before the gap.
What changes for manual assignment: it warns, it does not block
Where a person makes the final choice, CongPlan warns instead of blocking. In the person pickers for meeting parts, technical assignments, and field service meetings, an absent candidate is shown struck through and dimmed with an absent (until …) badge, and the entry stays selectable. The same badge appears in the technical assignment matrix next to the other conflict warnings.
That is deliberate. A coordinator sometimes knows more than the calendar does, and a return flight landing the morning before the meeting is not something the app can judge. See Plan Our Christian Life and Ministry Meeting for the other signals that appear while assigning.
Hand-over requests do not reach an absent person
Hand-over requests are stricter than manual planning. Anyone absent on the date in question is not asked at all, and if a recipient becomes absent while a request is still open, taking it over fails. Recording an absence therefore also keeps you out of requests you would have had to decline.
Who may see an absence
Absences are personal data, so visibility is deliberately narrow:
- You always see your own.
- Planners see every absence in the congregation: holders of Users (full details), Technical Assignments, Field Service Meetings, or one of the meeting-edit permissions. Those are exactly the surfaces where an absence is a conflict.
- The basic Users (names only) permission that every publisher has is not enough. Ordinary publishers do not see each other's absences.
Record an absence for someone else
Not everyone reports an absence themselves. Someone mentions in passing that they will be away in July, and the planner should be able to write it down. Four independent routes lead to another person's absences:
| Who | May manage the absences of |
|---|---|
| Every user | Their own absences |
| Users edit permission | Everyone in the congregation |
| Absences edit permission | Everyone they can already see |
| Field service group overseer, group servant, or their assistant | Active publishers of their own group, if the congregation has switched that on |
For the first three, open the person under Congregation > Organisation > Users and use the Absences card on their page. The card appears exactly when you are actually allowed to manage that person's absences.
The group route needs the congregation setting Group overseers or group servants can manage group absences. With it on, the Absences page gains a second card, Absences in your field service group. The group's overseer or servant and their assistant can manage active publishers of that group only.
The Absences edit permission is the narrow one: write access without full person editing, reaching only people you can already see. Its details and its rollout state are on Absences.