Nearly every business owner in the pet care industry has run into a situation where a client and their assigned staff member were not a good fit. Whether it was due to the staff member making a mistake while caring for the client’s pets or because the client made the staff member uncomfortable during one of their interactions, having the ability to sever any connections between the two and prevent further communication from occurring can be vital to the success of your company and to the comfort of your clients and pet sitters. For that reason, we are very excited to announce a new feature designed to make removing a staff member’s access to a client’s profile easier than ever: Managing Client-Specific Staff Access
This is a feature that has been highly requested, and it is due to that invaluable feedback that we’ve been able to bring it to you now. Here at Time To Pet, we greatly appreciate each and every one of you who has taken the time to send us your input and suggestions, as they play an instrumental role in shaping our product. If you have any thoughts or ideas that you would like to share with the team, please feel free to email them to us at support@timetopet.com!
With this new feature, you will be able to revoke specific client access from staff members with the click of a button under the Client Subscriptions tab located on each staff member’s profile.
Once a staff member has had their access revoked from a client’s profile, they will no longer be able to see any of their details or messages, and they will no longer be able to interact with them through their conversation feeds.
On the Administrator side of things, when staff access has been removed from a client’s profile, you will no longer be able to assign that staff member to events for that client, and their name will appear in dropdown menus under a new section titled “Access Removed” for events relating to that particular client.
When Is A Staff Member Granted Access To A Client’s Profile?
You may be wondering under what circumstances a staff member is initially granted access to a client’s profile. If the staff member has the role of an Administrator or an Office Manager, they will automatically have access to all client profiles. This is a locked setting that cannot be adjusted. However, if the staff member has the role of Staff (employee), User (independent contractor), or Trainee, they are granted access to a client’s profile when one or both of the following conditions have been met in Time To Pet:
- The staff member is assigned to at least one event for the client in the past or the future
- The staff member is listed as Preferred Staff on the Details tab of a client’s profile
If neither of the above conditions has been met, then the client won’t appear under the Client Subscriptions tab on the staff member’s profile, and they won’t have been granted access to that client’s profile.
Any clients that a staff member has had access removed from will remain listed under the Client Subscriptions tab on that staff member’s profile, even if they no longer meet the above conditions. This is so an Administrator or Office Manager can restore a staff member’s access to a client if the need arises. If access has been restored to a client for a staff member, but they aren’t assigned to any events for that client, and they are not listed as a Preferred Staff member for them, then the client will no longer be visible in their Client Subscriptions tab.
Some Things To Keep In Mind
Before attempting to remove a staff member’s access from a client’s profile, there are a couple of things you’ll want to double-check in order to successfully do so.
First, make sure the staff member isn’t listed as Preferred Staff for the client. To verify whether or not this is the case, navigate to the Details tab of a client’s profile and find the “Preferred Staff & Do Not Schedule” section.
If they are listed under the “Preferred Staff” heading, you can remove them from the list by clicking the red “X” to the right of their name.
The second thing you’ll want to do is reassign all future scheduled events and any template services the staff member is currently assigned to for that client to another staff member. You can reassign any events scheduled in the future using the Bulk Update tool by searching for events using the client and staff member’s names to expedite the process. To update template events that have not yet been approved onto the schedule, you will want to edit the template services directly. Instructions for how to update the staff member assigned to pending template events can be found in our help article here: Editing Template Services.
Events that exist in the past (regardless of their visit status) or events scheduled for the future that have a “Completed” or “Cancelled” status will not affect your ability to remove a staff member’s access from a client’s profile and will allow past reporting to remain intact and accurate. For more information on how revoking staff access works and how you can restore access for a staff member once it has been removed, please see our help article here: Managing Client-Specific Staff Access.
