identification field 324 and by their initials in initials field 328 in the illustrated embodiment only those employees who are currently unavailable are displayed in the long term absence register the duration of the long term absence is indicated in the duration field 332 by showing beginning and end dates for the absence and the employee 39 s destination during the absence is indicated in the absence field 336 an entry field 312 is provided with a u201c submit u201d button 316 to submit information as is an u201c io register u201d button 320 to switch back to the short term absence register the overall operation of the system from the short term register is illustrated in fig4 a from the short term register such as shown in fig2 a an entry is made into the entry field 224 and detected at step 404 upon activation of the u201c submit u201d button 226 the system generally contemplates that a single character will be entered to access other aspects of the system or that an employee 39 s initials typically of two or three characters will be entered thus for example if the letter u201c v u201d is entered the long.