Suggestion on setting freelancer's availability on Upwork

[matrixkavi]

Hi Upworkers, This is just a feedback on the availability feature that you provide. Currently we have the following options under this feature:

• mark oneself as unavailable if he/she goes on a vacation or is not having enough time to take up new projects
•  mark as available for less than 30 hours per week
• mark as available for more than 30 hours per week.

Since Upwork is a global platform that lets freelancers and clients from different geographical locations to connect with each other, how about having an enhancement which allows freelancers to quote the exact time he/she is available to work? Maybe indicate that in a calendar saying that I am available everyday from 11 am to 5pm my time for instance. I do not know if this has been discussed here previously. Cheers, Kavitha

[michael_skaggs]

The more I think about this idea, the more I like it. I doubt it would even be that hard for them to implement, since they already know your location, meaning they know your time zone. And they already translate timezones in the top of the message center and on job postings.

I'd think it would be fairly simple to allow you to set your availability by your local time, and then have that displayed as whatever the local time is for someone viewing your profile.

[AveryO]

I think this is in interesting suggestion, Kavitha. Although for uniformity, and for easier reference, I think a schedule displayed in UTC is okay too?

Anyway, I'll share this with the team for their consideration. Thank you!

[matrixkavi]

Hi Avery and Michael,

I am glad that you found this suggestion useful. I would not mind if the first release of this new feature shows time in UTC alone. It is more helpful anyway rather than letting the client guess the exact time slot that you could be available. Probably, showing local time can be deferred to a later release. Just my two cents.

Cheers,

Kavitha