When notifying managers of an employee’s leave request, Humanforce alerts are able to automate this process on a schedule.
Below are a list best practices to use when creating this alert.
Alert Name
It's important to use meaningful alert names to help identify the purpose of the alert. As this alert is usually set up for managers of a specific department or location, that should be included in your name. An example could be "Leave Request Alert - Brisbane Managers."
Group and Function
The group and function identify what the alert is trying to send. As we are looking to send an alert to management when leave is requested, select the Availability group and the Leave Requests Function.
Execute Every VS Execute At
The Execute Every and Execute At identify how often you want to send alerts out to users. When looking to notify managers, it is recommended that a set time be user to generate the alert. In this example, the alert will generate at 9:00am each day and is sent to each manager in the send group
Allow Resend After
The allow Resend After controls how often we want to alert the user of the request. In this case, it will notify the manager once a week until the leave request has been approved.
Resend no more than
The Resend No More Than value provides a cap of how many times this alert will be sent before it is essentially deactivated. As a best practice, the Resend No More Than value should be left at 0 which means it will continue indefinitely.
Leave Status & Leave Type
The Leave Status & Leave Type value help filter alerts sent to the managers. If you are trying to alert the manager of a request, the Leave Status should be set to “REQUESTED” and the desired leave types enabled.
Date Option
The Date Option allows the alert service to look up the request based on the date the employee entered their leave or the start date of the leave request. In this example, we want to notify the managers based on the leave date.
Sort option
The Sort Option allows the alert service to order the contents of the message being sent. If set to First Name, Last Name, Date, then if a manager has multiple leave requests to approve, they will be listed alphabetically by First Name.
Execute On
The Execute On setting allows the alert service to run on specific days of the week. In this example, the alert service will only message managers on week days.
Send By
The send by values allow you to notify the user either by Internal Message or Email. The internal message will notify the user when they next log in or send a push notification if they have the app installed while the email option sends to the email address on file. For Requested Leave Alerts, we typically recommend only sending by email since there are already System Notifications that cover this functionality.
Execution Offset VS Range Offset
The Execution Offset and the Range Offset allow the alert service to send alerts for leave requested in the next X amount of days, weeks, months or years. In this example, we have set the Range Offset to look at all leave requests from today to 1 year from now. Any leave requests which land in this time period will be sent to the manager. If an employee requests leave for more than a year out, the manager will not get a notification until the request is within a year.
Message template for group
You must use the Message Template For Group section (on the right) to enter the content which will be sent to the manager. The HTML section will be sent via email while the plain text section is used for internal messages.
Email Content
The email content is what will be sent to the managers when they have outstanding leave requests. The subject line of the alert should always reference what is being sent while the body of the alert can utilise tables to iterate over multiple employees. In the example below, the table values will print out a list of employees, dates and shift types which have been requested using Placeholders.
A hyperlink can be included in the email to direct users to your Humanforce website.
To learn more about formatting the email content, check out How to use the Alerts HTML email editor? (Video)
Filtering VS Recipients
The Filtering section is used to reduce the employees which will be sent to the manager (i.e. we only want the manager to get alerted when someone in their department or location requests leave). Employees can be filtered by the Location, Department, Role, Access level, Employee Type, and more.
Note: Do not tick the box to Send Alerts to Employee as this message is intended for managers
only. A separate alert can be configured to notify employees when their leave request is
actioned.
The Recipients are the managers which will be notified of the request. This is controlled through the use of Send Groups and a new group can be added by the Add Group button. The Send Groups can also be filtered by Location, Department, Role, Access level, Employee Type, and more.
Please note that prior to version 4.8.25, you could only have a MAX of 50 users in a Send Group.
