Leave notifications are the internal system notifications managers and employees can receive when a leave request is made or accepted/declined.
There are several options surrounding who, if anyone, receives notifications. You can:
- Disable leave notifications completely.
- Enable all request notifications for lower access levels (e.g. emloyees) to go to all higher access levels.
- Set specific rules around notifications by access levels and shift types. For example, if an employee requests leave, the notification will go to their department manager only, rather than location managers and administrators.
- Enable multi-level approvals where a request from an employee could first go to their department manager. If the department manager then pre-approves the leave, then it will go to the location manager for final approval.
System-Wide Settings
Your decision will be made in the Setup menu > System-Wide Settings > Leave & Availability in the Back Office. The three options in question are Enable Leave Notifications, Set notifications per Access Level and Shift Type, and Enable multi-level leave approval. If none of these are ticked, then notifcations will be disabled.
If you Enable Leave Notifications but don't tick the other boxes, no further setup is required as notifications will be sent to all higher access levels.
Access Level Configuration
If you choose to Set notifications per Access Level and Shift Type, then in Admin > Access Levels in Humanforce Web, you'll be able to configure the Leave Approval Workflow for each access level. Open the access level you wish to configure first, and navigate to the Leave Approval Workflow tab.
Note: We recommend starting with the lowest access level and working your way up.
The Leave Approval Workflow settings are split into two sections: the Shift Type Configuration and the Notification Settings. These correspond to the upper and lower sections on the Leave Approval Workflow tab respectively. In order to define the Notification settings, you first need to click Add New Record at the top of the page to configure a Shift Type.
In the Shift Type configuration, you will need to add an entry for each Shift Type that you want to control the notification settings for. You will also need to define whether employees on this Access Level can request and/or authorise leave of the type selected. In general, employees should be able to request and managers should be able to both request and approve. The ability to approve will still be restricted by visibility and other permissions defined in the Access Levels.
The Auto-Authorise and Auto-Cancel settings allow employees to skip the approval process when requesting leave or requesting a cancellation. In other words, if these settings are on, leave requests and cancellations are automatically approved without requiring manager intervention. These settings can generally be left as disabled.
The last section of the Shift Type settings relates to the leave notifications and the approval process. The Manager Access Level setting defines which access level should act as the manager for the current access level in terms of leave approval. For example, if you were configuring these settings on the Employee access level, you might choose the authoriser access level as the department manager. This means that staff on the Authoriser access level would be responsible for handling leave requests from staff on the User access level.
The Recipient Scope setting further controls which users should receive notifications by letting you define a Location and Department Scope to apply to the manager access level. For example, if the manager access level is Department Manager and you choose the Default Location/Department Only option for the Recipient Scope, leave notifications will be sent to any staff on the Department Manager access level who have the same Default Location and Department as the requesting user.
Once you have completed the Shift Type Configuration, click Update to save the changes and return to the previous screen. You should see an entry which corresponds to the Shift Type you selected in the top half of the page. By clicking this entry, you will see a number of options appear in the Notification Settings per action section at the bottom of the page. This is where you can control which actions will generate notifications and who receives those notifications.
By clicking the Edit button next to any of the given actions, you will be able to enable either the Notify Employee and/or Notify Manager settings. These will cause notifications to be sent to either the employee (i.e. the user who will be taking leave) or their Manager (i.e. any employees defined by the Manager Access Level and Recipient Scope settings from the previous step). These settings would generally be configured as follows:
Actions to notify Employee: Approve, Decline, Approve Cancellation, Undo Approval
Actions to notify Manager: Request, Request Cancellation
Click Close when all Shift Types needed have been configured for this Access Level and then move to the next level.
Note: If you choose to enable notifications per Access Level and Shift Type but
do not configure the Access Levels, no internal leave notifications will be sent.
Multi-Level Leave Approvals
If you enabled Multi-Level Leave Approval, your process will be the same as above, however, you will have additional options in the Shift Type configuration for who Can Pre-Authorise and a notification for Pre-approve can be turned on.
When the manager who has Pre-Authorise permissions goes to approve the leave, they will see a symbol next to the tick box to indicate they are only pre-approving.
The manager with full authorisation permissions will see that the leave has already been pre-approved once it gets to their level.
While the leave request is in the interim state of being pre-approved, but not yet approved, the employee will see this indicated on their calendar.
