Tuesday, a design studio, six people. Marek from your team assigns Kasia revisions to the Nord proposal, due Thursday. On Friday, he gets a call from the client: the proposal still hasn’t arrived. Who’s on leave? Kasia - she won’t be back until 19 October.
Leave gets overlooked in a small business when the calendar is separate
A separate leave spreadsheet won’t help when you’re assigning a task if no one checks it. Absence information should be visible where you plan deadlines and discuss work.
Marek might have received a message from Kasia a week earlier. But if it was sent on a personal messaging app and the task was created somewhere else, he had to remember it on that exact Tuesday. It’s the same problem described by the single source of truth for team agreements: the message exists, but isn’t there when the decision is made.
Task Manager doesn’t replace an HR system. It doesn’t handle leave requests, manager approvals or leave balances. Absence status is for planning team work, not managing leave.
A dated status means you don’t have to remember when someone returns
A scheduled absence starts on the specified start date and ends after the end date. So you don’t have to remind Kasia to change her status to Available manually when she returns.
Set your absence status in Settings, on the Profile tab, under Availability status. You can choose Holiday, Sick or Absent, enter start and end dates and add a message; the default status is Available.
Let’s say Kasia leaves on Monday 5 October and returns to work on Monday 19 October. On Friday 2 October, she selects Holiday for 5 to 18 October and writes: “I’ll be back on 19 October. For anything related to the Nord proposal, contact Magda.” This is an example of a message the team can use; there’s no need to put it in a separate file.
After the end date, the banner, indicators and auto-replies disappear. Administrators can also see a list of people who are away.
“I’m on leave” explains the silence, but Magda’s name tells Marek who to pass an urgent matter to. It doesn’t replace assigning tasks - it gives the team a starting point.
See who’s on leave above the day plan
You’ll see team members’ absences in the strip at the top of the Calendar, above the hourly grid. The Calendar shows tasks, events and scheduled AI sends alongside them, so you can check people’s availability while planning deadlines.
Open the Calendar using the view icon in the top bar of the middle column; the same menu also contains Board and Notes. Click an item in the absence strip to see the person’s avatar, name, type of absence, date range and any message they’ve added. You can also find details of how the view works in the Task Manager Calendar overview.
The strip shows three people per day. If more people are away, “+n” or the arrow next to “abs.” expands the full list. The expanded strip has its own scrolling, and the Calendar remembers your choice.
Before planning Monday, switch to the 7-day view and check who’ll be away before the task’s due date. You can also choose 1-, 3- and 5-day views, or List, where absences appear under the day heading.
This isn’t an annual leave schedule. The Calendar lets you look at the next few days or the week ahead - the timeframe you usually use to decide who’ll take over a task and whether you can meet the due date.
The AI Assistant alerts you, but doesn’t decide for you
The AI Assistant alerts you when you try to assign a task to someone who’s away. It doesn’t prevent the assignment: you can pass the work to someone else or knowingly leave it with that person, with a due date after they return.
On Tuesday 6 October, Marek wants to assign Kasia revisions to the Nord proposal, due Thursday. If he uses the AI Assistant, he’ll be notified that she’s away and can change the plan before promising the client a deadline. The Assistant only sees what Marek has access to; Task Manager itself also works without AI.
You can assign the task to Magda, add her as a second assignee or move the due date. A task can have several assignees. In the Calendar, you can change the due date of a task you have permission to edit by dragging it to another day. Undo the change using the icon or Ctrl+Z - up to 20 changes while the app is open.
When the assignee or due date changes, the team will see a system message in the thread. When the due date changes, they will also see its previous value. So they can see what changed, but the system won't add a reason for you. If the client is waiting for an explanation, write a sentence about the new due date in the thread.
The AI Assistant in Task Manager is optional and uses the client's own key with OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude or xAI Grok. When you use it, the prompt and the necessary context are sent to the model provider. Without AI configured, you still have absence statuses, the Calendar and an auto-reply in the thread.
An auto-reply ends the silence in the thread, not in the email inbox
When you write in a task or chat thread that includes someone with the Holiday or Sick status, an auto-reply from them will appear in the thread, not in the email inbox. It includes your mention and the message set for their absence, or the default text if they haven't set one.
So Marek doesn't have to wait until Friday for Kasia to respond to the task about the offer. If Kasia wrote that Magda is taking over, Marek will see this note in the conversation about the specific task. He still has to decide whether to add Magda to the task and what due date to agree with the client.
An auto-reply is sent once a day per thread. Another message sent in the same conversation on the same day won't trigger another reply; a new one may appear the next day or in a different thread. This applies to the Holiday and Sick statuses, not as a reply to email, and it shouldn't be attributed to the Absent status.
Arrange cover before you leave, not after the first delay
You can prepare cover by naming them in your absence message and checking that they have access to the relevant Workspace. For urgent tasks, add the cover person as another assignee rather than assuming the status will pass the work on to them.
On the Friday before Kasia goes away, review the tasks due the following week with her. If Magda is to take care of the Nord offer, check that she belongs to the relevant Workspace. Add a user by clicking the pencil icon next to the Workspace name, in the “Assign users” section; you can set permissions and save the change there.
The “Tasks” permission lets users create new tasks in a given Workspace. Without it, Magda can still see a task she's been added to and write in its thread. This is an important distinction: access to a specific case doesn't necessarily mean permission to create more tasks.
When you send your cover a link copied from a task, remember that someone without access will see a message, not the thread content. I describe this step in more detail in the article about assigning tasks across a team.
With Pro, you can add a reminder before the due date
Automations are available with Pro; you don't need them to set a status, check the Calendar and get an auto-reply. They're an extra signal alongside the four basic places: the status, the Calendar, the optional AI Assistant and the thread. If you're keeping track of lots of due dates, you can build a recipe that reacts when a task's due date is approaching and its assignee is absent.
A recipe follows the WHEN - IF - DO pattern: an event triggers a condition check, and if the condition is met, actions can be performed. For example: WHEN a task is due in 24 hours, IF “assignee is absent”, DO “show a notification” and “write a message in the thread”. The notification will go to the recipe creator's Notification Centre, in the “Automations” category.
The “Absence Guard” is also available in the “Team and due dates” category of the template library. However, don't assume the automation will choose a replacement: changing a task's assignee isn't one of its actions. It can send a signal, write in the thread or create a task, but the decision to hand over the work is up to you.
Before enabling your own rule, use “Test”. You'll see what would happen for recent matching events, without performing actions or sending messages. The recipe runs with its creator's permissions; for details on building and testing rules, see the Automations guide.
Tomorrow, enter absences, then check the tasks
Tomorrow, ask everyone on the team to enter their next planned absence with the date range and one sentence about who will cover. Then open the Calendar for 7 days and review tasks assigned to people who will be away. To see these views before setting them up for your team, open the Demo.
Frequently asked questions
How can I tell who’s on leave today?
Check the absence strip at the top of the Calendar. Click someone to see the type of absence, dates and any message they’ve added. The strip shows three people per day; if more people are away, expand the full list using “+n” or the arrow next to “abs.”.
Will Task Manager prevent me from assigning a task to someone who’s on leave?
No, an absence doesn’t prevent you from assigning a task. The optional AI Assistant alerts you when you try to assign a task to someone who’s away; you decide whether to change the assignee or due date.
Does someone on leave have to change their status manually when they return?
No, a set absence ends after its end date. A future absence starts on its start date, and its indicators and auto-replies disappear once it ends.
What does someone who messages a person on holiday receive?
They’ll receive an auto-reply in the task or chat thread if the person on holiday is a participant. It includes a mention and the message from their absence profile, or the default text; it appears once a day in each thread. It also works with the Sick status, but it isn’t an email reply.
Will Task Manager replace an HR leave management system?
No, Task Manager doesn’t handle leave requests, manager approvals or leave balances. It helps you see absences when planning work; managing leave remains a separate matter.
Sources
The Task Manager Team - we write about teamwork, AI in business and keeping tasks organised, using examples from Task Manager, software installed on your own server. Task Manager has been developed by Blue Creation Group (Piotr Łącz) since 2013 and is used by organisations including Neonet, the Military University of Technology and Polpharma - read customer reviews. We check our articles against the user guide and the latest version of the software.
