Telegram check-ins

Employees can mark the start and end of their shift straight from Telegram. Their actual hours then appear as the Actual series next to Planned on the dashboard.

Link an employee (manager)

1. Open an employee's card (from the schedule Employees tab or the grid).
2. In the Telegram bot section, click Generate link.
3. Send the resulting telegram.me/… link to that employee (any messenger works).

Only users who can manage employees see this section. Each link works once and expires after 72 hours — generate a fresh one if needed.

Clock in and out (employee)

1. Open the link → it starts the Smengo bot. Pick a language.
2. Tap Clock in when the shift starts and Clock out when it ends.
3. My shift today shows the planned shift for the day.

The arrival time is recorded once — tapping Clock in again just confirms the existing time. Times are recorded in the organization's timezone.

Where the data shows up

On the dashboard, the Team hours chart gains an Actual series (from check-ins) next to Planned (from the schedule). Actual hours are visible to users who can manage employees.

Seeing who checked in

On the schedule grid, today's column shows a small badge on each work cell: a green dot = on shift, a check = clocked out, a hollow dot = not checked in yet (only for employees linked to Telegram). For the full picture, open Check-ins in the sidebar — pick any date to see, per employee, the planned shift, actual in/out times, and hours worked.

Auto-lateness

The system can flag late arrivals automatically: the bot check-in is compared with the shift start (the entry's time or the shift preset's time) in your organization's timezone.

1. Open Settings → Organization → Shifts and enable "Flag lateness automatically".
2. Set the grace period — arriving within it does not count as late (5 minutes by default).
3. Done: work cells on the schedule show a "+N min" badge (hover to see the arrival time, shift start, and grace), and the Check-ins page gains a "Late" column.

Nothing is written to the schedule: the badge is computed from check-ins on the fly, so retroactive shift edits are always respected. The manual "Late" status keeps working as before. The setting is available to whoever manages shifts.

Employee availability

Employees can flag ahead of time which days they can't work, or which days they'd like a shift — this helps when building the schedule.

1. In the bot, the employee taps 🗓 My availability, which opens a calendar covering the next 4 weeks.
2. Tapping a day cycles its mark: empty → ✖ "can't work" → ✋ "want a shift" → empty again.
3. Marks save immediately and can be changed at any time.

Managers see these marks directly on the schedule grid: a small ✖ (muted red) or ✋ (green) badge appears in the bottom-left corner of the day, even on empty cells. Hovering shows a tooltip: "Can't work/Wants a shift this day (self-reported)."

Opening the cell editor for a day marked ✖ shows a yellow warning at the top: "Employee marked: can't work this day." This is only a warning — you can still schedule a shift, and saving is not blocked.

Availability marks can't be edited from the app on an employee's behalf — the source of truth is the employee themselves, via the bot.