Configuring Flamingo - A Quick Start Guide

Note: you will need admin privileges in your Slack workspace to sign up for Flamingo and add it to your workspace. To add the Flamingo app to your user's Slack account, you will need to invite them to Flamingo first and the Flamingo app will be auto-installed.

To add Flamingo to Slack, go to https://helloflamingo.com/ .

Click Add to Slack if you don't have an active Flamingo account yet. Otherwise, hit Sign in if you already joined.

If you're not already signed in to a Slack workspace, you'll be asked to do so now.

Otherwise, use the dropdown menu on the top right hand side to check you're on the right workspace you want to add Flamingo to.

You'll be shown the list of permissions Flamingo needs in order to operate, and to manage leave for your team.

Now you're signed up to Flamingo 🥳

There are just a few more small steps required to configure Flamingo for your company.

Start by clicking the Get Started button to begin onboarding.

Settings

This is where you start your Flamingo onboarding. Don't worry if you need to change anything later on, these settings can be adjusted anytime.

There are three settings here to set:

Start of work week - This is so Flamingo knows what the first day of the week is.
Work week - Which days are considered a working day?
Timezone - What timezone your team operates in?

Leave Policy

Paid time off and Sick leave policies are enabled by default.

Let us know how many days are allowed - or select "Unlimited" to go ahead with no limit.

To find out how the roll over feature works, click here.

Choose whether or not to enable the Unpaid leave policy.

Tips -

You can add more leave policies after onboarding.
The option to select half days can be set after onboarding.
If you have a user with unique leave policies, then you can use the leave override feature after onboarding. This is for situations like -

One user gets more/fewer days off than everyone else.
A user only works two days a week.
Maybe a user works in another location with different public holidays.
A user has already consumed some day's leave before joining Flamingo.

Locations

The next step is to select which public holidays your company observes. These will be added to your Flamingo vacation calendar, so everyone knows which days they can kick back, relax, and log off.

You can use the dropdown menu to select a country and import all public holidays from that country. You're free to pick and choose from the list of holidays that come up or add all to your calendar.

If you want to add any additional company-wide holidays, you can add them here by hitting the Add Custom Holiday button.

This will bring up a window for you to set up your own holiday. Just let us know:

The name of the holiday
Date(s)
Whether this holiday is recurring or not (happens on the same date every year)

Hit Add Holiday when you're done.

Now click Save & Location at the bottom and your team has public holidays added.

If you are finished adding public holidays, click Next to proceed to the next step.

Tips -

You can add or edit your public holidays later on by following this guide.

Slack Notifications

In this section you can decide if leave changes along with daily and weekly notifications will be sent.

This is useful for keeping up to date when someone on your team is on leave or has a public holiday coming up. Click here to find out more about this notification feature.

Click the Next button when you are finished to move to the next section.

Invite Users

Now you can start inviting users to Flamingo. Just click the Invite Users button and select the users from the dropdown.

You can add more users later using this guide.

Click Finish to complete onboarding and start using Flamingo.

Any users you invited will now have Flamingo automatically added to their Slack app along with a notification on how to get started with Flamingo.

Tips -

After onboarding, you can assign a user to be a manager, admin, or owner. To find out more about these roles and how to assign a user as one, click here.
You can also add additional teams to Flamingo. Use this to account for junior and senior teams or maybe accounting and tech teams.

What is next?

Follow this to learn how to start sharing leave information with your team.

Want more information on leave requests and managing them? click here.

Looking to have more Slack integrations for your leave requests? click here.

You should be able to find Slack in the "Apps" section of your Slack workspace. If it doesn't show here, just click Add apps, and click on the Flamingo icon.

Problems, or questions? Please feel free to contact our support here.