Overview

Context

Camelo’s Time Off page showed requests as a list. It worked well for approving individual requests, but gave managers no sense of the bigger picture. Who else was off that week? How long did a request span? Would the team be short-staffed?

To answer those questions, some managers built spreadsheets in Google Sheets or Excel and color-coded statuses by hand. Others kept switching between the Time Off page and the Schedule page to piece the information together themselves.

Solution

I designed a calendar view alongside the existing list, giving managers a full picture of time off across their team at a glance.

Outcomes

One month after launch, 64% of Time Off users had switched to the calendar view. Users who had built their own spreadsheet workarounds reported they no longer needed them.

Research & Discovery

Looking at how managers process time off

To understand how managers were actually handling time off, we ran user interviews, sent a short survey, and reviewed session recordings.

User interviews surfaced a clear pattern. One manager showed us a spreadsheet calendar they had built by hand, with color codes for different statuses and types of leave. It was their way of seeing who would be away on a given day and spotting overlaps before approving new requests.

Session recordings confirmed it: managers were repeatedly switching between the Time Off page and the Schedule page to piece together who was available.

The list view was built for processing single requests, not seeing the full picture

The current Time Off page worked well when a manager wanted to act on a single request. They could see the details, approve or decline, and move on.

But it couldn’t answer the questions that came up while planning:

• Who else is off that week/month?
• How long is this request, and does it overlap with anyone?
• Is anyone taking more time off than usual in this period?

The existing list view. Functional for approvals, but no visual sense of coverage or overlap.

Market analysis

I looked at how scheduling and HR tools approached calendar views — Connecteam, Homebase, and others — focusing on how they handled density, color, and interaction patterns.

Process

Explorations & design decisions

Every decision came back to two guiding principles:

Choosing how to represent time off in a cell

The first question was how each request should look in a single calendar cell. I explored several directions, knowing that one cell would sometimes need to hold multiple entries or partial-day requests.

The final direction kept the cell simple: a labeled block per request, with status communicated through fill style rather than color. This gave the calendar room to breathe even on busy weeks.

Choosing colors for status

The calendar needed to show three states clearly: pending, approved, and public holidays.

Managers spent most of their time in the Schedule page, which already had established patterns for absences and holidays. I reused them: gray blocks for approved, striped blocks for pending, gray cell background for holidays.

Consistent, neutral, and immediately recognizable to anyone who had used the Scheduler before.

Handling partial days and multiple days

A single cell needed to support full-day requests, partial-day requests, and occasionally two requests on the same day. Looking at real Camelo data, two requests on a single day was already an edge case, and three or more was vanishingly rare.

So I capped the display at two blocks per cell. This covered nearly every real-world case without designing for a problem that didn’t exist.

I explored stacking blocks and splitting cells. Stacking worked better when combined with color-coded statuses, but we'd already decided against color — so stacking was out.

Keeping approval in context

Managers could approve requests directly from the list view. When they switched to the calendar, they should be able to take the same actions.

I added tooltips to surface request details on hover, and reused the existing detail modal for inline approve and decline actions. The modal was already familiar from the list view, so managers didn’t need to learn a new interaction.

Final Design

The final design

A calendar view that sits alongside the existing list, designed for fast scanning and quick decisions.

Prototype

Switch between List and Calendar

Managers can move between the existing List View and the new Calendar View depending on what they need to do. Lists for processing one request at a time. Calendar for seeing the bigger picture.

Status visible at a glance

Pending, approved, and public holidays are shown with the same visual language used in the Scheduler. Striped blocks for pending. Solid gray for approved. Gray background for holidays.

Partial and multiple time off in a day

Each cell supports full-day, partial-day, and up to two requests on the same day. Beyond that, the calendar stays readable.

Approving without leaving the calendar

Clicking a time-off block opens the request details with approve and decline actions inline. The same modal used in the list view, so managers don’t have to learn a new interaction.

Click any block to see the request and act on it without leaving the calendar.

Impact

The results

Instead of reviewing requests one by one, managers could now see availability across the team at a glance, spot patterns, and anticipate staffing gaps. The work that used to require a separate tool now happened directly in Camelo.

64% of Time Off users adopted the calendar within the first month. Users who had built spreadsheet workarounds switched to it after launch, and feedback showed it became the go-to tool for planning while the list remained useful for approvals and administration.

Reflection

What I learned