Book time off and go away
A time-off block is a date range that reduces your capacity for the days it covers. Two of the four kinds can also announce an away state on your Beacon, with the date you are back.
The four kinds
| Type | Capacity removed | Can show on your Beacon |
|---|---|---|
| Vacation | All of it | Yes |
| Holiday | All of it | Yes |
| Sick | All of it | No |
| Focus | A share you choose, from 1% to 99% | No |
Only focus blocks take a percentage. The other three are all or nothing, and the server enforces that rather than trusting what the form sends - so a vacation always removes the whole day.
Sick days deliberately cannot be published. They reduce your capacity, which is the honest effect, without putting your health on a page strangers can read.
What it does to your capacity
For each working day inside your planning horizon, Candid Beacon looks for blocks covering that day and applies the largest reduction it finds. Overlapping blocks do not stack: a focus block at 50% overlapping a vacation gives 100% off that day, not 150%.
Days you do not work anyway are unaffected, because they were never counted. Booking a fortnight off does not remove fourteen days of capacity if you work five days a week - it removes ten.
It moves your next opening date too
A block that removes all of your capacity also pushes your next opening date past the end of it. You are not available inside your own leave, even at zero load, so the estimate lands on the day after the block ends rather than inside it.
A focus block does not move the date, because partial time off leaves real availability behind. What “next opening” means covers the rest of that calculation.
Going away, publicly
Tick “show on Beacon” on a vacation or holiday block and your Beacon switches to an away state for the days it covers. Away is a state, not a percentage.
While you are away, your Beacon shows:
- Your away label - either your own wording, up to 100 characters, or the default “Away until” phrasing.
- The date you are back, when the block has an end date.
And deliberately does not show:
- Your load figure. The away state is checked before the published snapshot is even read, so an away Beacon can never sit a stale percentage next to “on holiday”.
- The freshness marker, the booking banner, or a next opening date.
The return date is not converted into the reader’s timezone. “Back on 24 Dec 2026” means the 24th where you are - which is the day you are actually back. Same rule, and same reason, as the next opening date.
Which day is which
A block is stored as plain calendar dates, and it applies to those dates in your timezone. Mark off the 9th and your capacity drops on your 9th, not on somebody else’s. The same is true of the away window on your Beacon.