Coda time off (PTO) — version 1.0
Using forms to capture data
In our introductory blog, we emphasized that data input deserves attention from all creators. Ignoring this crucial step can lead to painstakingly crafted work being neglected and unused, gathering digital dust.
We create tables in our HR document for people, dates and work related roles. We use a form for new employees, one for updates, but also forms to add new roles and departments. How to transpose data I explained here.
Lesson number one
For the HR employee this is ease of mind. This is lesson number one: distribute and maintain your data wisely and logically over various (related) tables and create a Single Point of Input (SPI).
Once we have people, their roles and related dates we are ready for the main part: adding working schemas per employee.
Working schemas
When by default all employees work Mon — Friday between 8:30 and 17h00 and only occasionally an employee works 3 or 4 days per week, but still according the same schema, my suggestion is simple. You better add rows to the table working schemas automatically. Next you send a notification to inform HR that if there is a deviation, this row requires attention. In that row, you adapt the work schema. This logic requires that the employee feels comfortable enough in and with Coda to make the change. Maybe that is an assumption too much.
In a company with a bit more variation, the set up is different. We focus on this complex set up. By the way, the simple and the complex set up require the same set of supporting tables.
Supporting tables
We finally need a table like the one you see below. This is eye candy and based on the table I show next. The blue rows are the active values.
This table defines the working hours and corresponding Paid Time Off (PTO) for compensation purposes. While national governments often express compensation in days, company payments are based on contractual agreements and planned work hours. My approach ensures accurate compensation aligned with actual work schedules.
As you can see, this table is supported by the table breaks. In most cases I create this type of tables for my clients.
How to get started?
While database tables are crucial for data organization, they often intimidate non-technical users, including many HR professionals. Tables can feel overwhelming due to their grid-like structure, unfamiliar terminology, and the potential for data entry errors. Forms offer a more user-friendly alternative. They guide users through data entry step-by-step, hiding complex relationships between data points. This approach, though more challenging to develop, significantly improves the overal user experience and data accuracy.
The form should capture the days and the day variations per employee as of a certain date . The first date related to a role is the start date of the employee in the company, other options are change date or end dates.
What you see in this form was in a previous set up distributed over two tables and users had to edit each table (with buttons), which they did not like. As said, this is harder to develop, but better for the organisation using Coda. This approach enhances the user adaptation as well.
It is an option to prefill all working days and force the user to fill out all days and thus adding the option: no schema. I thought about it, but I believe this is simpler and goes faster.
We’ve developed a user-friendly system with a few key forms:
- New employee onboarding
- Employee status and position updates
- Daily working hours allocation
This design prioritizes user experience, ensuring that non-technical users can confidently input data without feeling overwhelmed by the underlying technical structure. Our approach focuses on simplicity and ease of use, making data entry accessible to all HR team members.
In our next blog post, we’ll delve into the nuances of capturing time data: days for government reporting per country and hours for employer payroll purposes. This dual approach addresses the different needs of compliance and accurate compensation.
I hope you enjoyed this article. If you have questions feel free to reach out. My name is Christiaan and blog about Coda. Though this article is for free, my work (including advice) won’t be, but there is always room for a chat to see what can be done. You find my (for free) contributions in the Coda Community and on Twitter. the Coda Community provides great insights for free once you add a sample doc.
All the AI features we are starting to see appear — lower prices, higher speeds, multimodal capability, voice, large context windows, agentic behavior — are about making AI more present and more naturally connected to human systems and processes. If an AI that seems to reason like a human being can see and interact and plan like a human being, then it can have influence in the human world. This is where AI labs are leading us: to a near future of AI as coworker, friend, and ubiquitous presence. I don’t think anyone, including OpenAI, has a full sense of all of the implications of this shift, and what it will mean for all of us. — source: Ethan Mollick from One Useful Thing.
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