Using Sharepoint Time Off to Manage Time Off Across Teams

Sharepoint time off is a feature of Sharepoint that enables employees to take time off and still be part of the work force. This is a major advantage over other applications like Time Office which restrict employees to working during their times off. With a Sharepoint time off policy employees are free to use their time off whenever they want. They can then use this time off to attend a seminar, pursue a long awaited vacation or attend a family member's home. This means that employees won't miss out on any scheduled Sharepoint sessions and that they can have more time to plan and prepare for the next day's work. When employees are given this flexibility with their work, they will be much happier and more productive than they would be with a typical set of work hours.

To start the Sharepoint time off process, you have to create a workflow that will automatically approve requests for time off and assign it to the appropriate employee. The workflow will collect the details of each request made by an employee and will store them in an electronic format so that it can be accessed from any Sharepoint application. You can also store the details of these requests in an Outlook document so that employees can access the details and approval process from any computer that has an Outlook Express installed.

These workflow and approval tasks can be stored in the form of Workflows so that you can create custom workflows that can be triggered by a number of different events. For instance, one Workflow might allow the employee to request time off when they become available. If they then fail to show up you could then define a new workflow that performs the following actions: remove the request from the queue, notify the supervisor, cancel the request, and then add the request back to the queue. All of these different workflow actions will make the requests go through a series of review steps that will guarantee the approvals of the requests before the specified time period expires. You can define as many Workflows as needed for the various tasks involved but the system will only ever use the ones that are essential to the system.

When you set up Sharepoint time off policies, you need to provide the appropriate names for the different items. In most cases the name of the schedule will be a link to a web page that displays the time off requests. This page will contain the request information that is associated with that name. You can assign different labels to the different items so that the requests can be reviewed manually and tracked. Using custom labels will ensure that the tracking system can be applied to the appropriate name within the Sharepoint calendar so that the application will not display any inappropriate names or request information.

Each time the request is created or approved, it is automatically added to the Sharepoint calendar so that all employees are aware of the availability of these requests. There are a number of other applications that you can use to manage these requests. You can use custom fields so that you can specify which employee is authorized to grant the request. There are even applications that will allow you to make the request to cross employees or across teams. If you have an HR department, it would be useful to create an HR request directly so that it is approved across all the departments.

The process of managing your Sharepoint time off requests is really quite simple. All that you need is a Sharepoint calendar view with the authority to manage the policies being enforced. You should also have access to the Requisition Management authorization so that you can approve or deny the request. In addition to that it would be a good idea to review the policies being enforced to ensure that they are being followed properly to prevent the request from falling through the cracks.