This article explains how to add the Happy Birthday Widget to a page, filter which birthdays it shows, and configure its display and style. It also flags what isn't yet confirmed about how the widget works, so nothing here is guessed.
🎯 Who this article is for: This article is for anyone with edit access to a page.
💼 Package requirements: The Happy Birthday Widget is available to Starter, Growth, and Enterprise.
1. Overview
The Happy Birthday Widget adds a small, personal touch to any page: a running list of who's celebrating, so recognizing birthdays doesn't depend on someone remembering to check a shared calendar or post in a channel. Add it to a company homepage to celebrate everyone, or add it to a department or regional page so a team only sees birthdays relevant to them. You control exactly who's included, how far ahead the widget looks, and how much detail it shows.
This widget lives on pages. If you're looking for the version that runs in channels instead, see the Channel Birthday Widget article, which covers birthdays in the channel sidebar.
2. Use cases
- Keep department pages personal: Filter the widget by department so a team's page only celebrates people on that team, keeping the tone focused instead of surfacing birthdays from across the whole company.
- Localize birthdays for regional offices: Add a locality filter to a country or office-specific page so employees only see birthdays for colleagues in their own location, which matters more as teams grow across multiple offices.
- Set the right lookahead for how far you plan: Use the timeframe options to show just today's birthdays for a quiet homepage widget, or extend to 30 days out for teams that like to plan a card or a shout-out in advance.
3. Before you begin
- You need edit access to add or configure a widget on a page.
- A person only appears in the widget if they've added their birthday to their Happeo profile in their User Settings.
- An admin must have Show birthdays and anniversaries turned on in Admin Settings → People Directory → Settings. If it's off, the widget can't be added to a page, and any widget already on a page stops showing birthdays (though its placeholder remains on the page rather than disappearing).
4. How to use the Happy Birthday Widget
Add the widget to a page
- Open the page in edit mode and add the Happy Birthday widget to a section.
- Before it's configured, the widget shows a placeholder cake icon with two buttons: + Add filters and 👁 Show preview.
Filter which birthdays appear
- Click + Add filters.
- In the Filter birthdays window, set any combination of Locality, Cost center, Title, and Department. Leave a filter set to All to ignore that attribute.
- Click Save.
Filters apply together, not separately: Only people matching every filter you've set will appear. Selecting more than one filter narrows the results further, it doesn't broaden them. The options inside each filter come from your organization's connected provisioning source.
🗒️ Note: The filters, not page access, decide who shows up. Someone can appear in the widget even if they're not an owner, editor, or otherwise able to access the page it's on.
5. Configure display options
Open the widget's configuration
- Hover over the widget and click the cog icon to open Edit widget.
- Go to the Configure tab.
Set how far ahead the widget looks
Under Show upcoming birthdays for, choose one of these windows:
- Today only.
- Today and next 7 days.
- Today and next 14 days.
- Today and next 30 days.
This window only controls how far ahead the widget looks for upcoming birthdays. It has no effect on Recent, which is a separate section with its own toggle for past birthdays.
Choose what the widget displays
Use these toggles to control what appears on the widget:
- Show recent: displays past birthdays.
- Show upcoming: displays upcoming birthdays.
- Widget header: shows or hides the widget's header.
- Profile avatars: shows each person's profile picture.
- Show dates: shows the birthday date next to each name.
- Countdown: shows the number of days until the birthday.
- Stacked birthdays: groups multiple birthdays that fall on the same date.
Turning off Show upcoming hides upcoming birthdays entirely, no matter what window you chose above. Click Show preview at any point to see your choices on the live page.
6. Customize the widget's style
Turn on custom styling
Before you can customize a widget's style, your page group needs an unlocked brand style enabled. If your brand style is locked, or none is enabled, Style option stays on Default (global widget style) and the settings below aren't available.
Once custom styling is available, choose one:
- (Customize): override this widget's own style.
- Default (global widget style): follow the page group's shared style instead.
Once you customize a widget, a banner confirms the change and lets you Reset to style default at any time.
Set the background and colour theme
- Background colour: sets the background colour of the section. The colors available depend on the system default and the brand style you're using.
-
Background image: sets a background image for the widget. Choose:
- Recommend an image for an AI suggested image.
- Select or upload to choose one from Google Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint, Box, or your computer.
- Browse Unsplash for stock photography.
-
Colour theme: sets how the widget's text and background work together. Choose:
- Automatic (Light, with dark text).
- Light (with dark text).
- Dark (with light text).
Adjust padding, shadow, and border
- Padding: adjusts how much background shows behind the widget, between 0px and 32px. A larger value shows more background and makes the content appear smaller; a smaller value minimizes the background and makes the widget appear larger.
- Custom padding: toggle on to set padding for each side individually. Use the lock icon to link all four sides so they change together, or unlock it to set the top, right, bottom, and left padding separately.
- Shadow: toggle on to add a shadow around the widget.
- Border: toggle on to add a border around the widget.
- Round corners: rounds the widget's corners between 0px and 16px. A larger value makes the corners appear rounder; a smaller value makes them appear sharper.
For guidance on resizing, copying, and deleting widgets, see Add and Manage Widgets.
7. Best practices
The Happy Birthday Widget works best when it's scoped to the page it's on. A couple of small adjustments keep it useful instead of noisy as more people join and more birthdays land on the same page.
- Match filters to the page's audience: Leave a company homepage unfiltered, but use Department or Locality on a team or office page so birthdays stay relevant to whoever is actually reading that page.
- Keep the timeframe short on busy pages: Today only or Today and next 7 days keeps the widget compact on pages with a lot of other content, while a longer window suits a dedicated culture or people page.
- Turn on stacked birthdays for larger groups: Once a department or office grows, more than one birthday can land on the same date. Turning this on keeps the widget tidy instead of repeating the same date.
8. Frequently asked questions
Do I need to do anything before birthdays show up?
Yes. Only people who've added their birthday to their Happeo profile can appear in the widget.
Can I combine filters, like Department and Locality, at the same time?
Yes. Filters apply together, so the widget only shows people who match every filter you've set, not people who match any single one.
Will two Happy Birthday widgets on different pages show the same people?
Not necessarily. Each widget has its own filters and configuration, so two widgets can show different people depending on how each one is set up.
What determines the options available in the Locality, Cost center, Title, and Department filters?
They're based on your organization's connected provisioning source.
Does the timeframe setting affect past birthdays as well as upcoming ones?
No. Show upcoming birthdays for only controls the upcoming window. Recent (past birthdays) is separate.
If someone isn't a page owner, editor, or otherwise doesn't have access to the page, can their birthday still show in that page's widget?
Yes. Who shows up is determined entirely by the filters you set (Locality, Cost center, Title, Department), not by who has access to the page. Someone outside a page's owners, editors, or viewers can still appear in its birthday list.
9. Troubleshooting
The widget shows an empty placeholder with no birthdays
This usually means an admin has turned off Show birthdays and anniversaries in Admin Settings → People Directory → Settings. While it's off, the widget can't be added to a page, and any widget already placed keeps its spot on the page but stops displaying birthdays. Ask an admin to check this setting first.