Arbor Workflows: Planned Absence Template

The Planned Staff Absence template automates the entire process from a staff member's initial request to line manager approval, automatic calendar updates, and direct entry into your Arbor MIS.

This video covers how to deploy the template into your account:

Deploying a Planned Absence template:

When deploying a template you will have to map the roles to your context as the template may use roles that are not as relevant to you. These can be changed and edited once you have deployed it, or, you can set up Custom Roles first. You can find out how to do this here: Custom Roles. It might be that roles exist on your MIS that you would like to use. If these are not showing as options you may need to 'sync' your Arbor Roles, find out how to do this here: Arbor Roles.

How it works

1. The Trigger: A staff member fills out a simple request form.

2. The Review: The Line Manager gets an automated notification to approve or reject the request.

3. The Sync: If approved, Arbor Workflows instantly logs the absence in your Arbor MIS and notifies the staff member. If rejected, the system automatically emails the staff member with the manager's feedback.

Step Guide

The Request Form (Trigger)

The template uses pre-configured 'Arbor Option Set' dropdown for Absence Types. This ensures that the data exactly matches the legal category fields required by your Arbor MIS, eliminating typing errors. 

This is a basic form that is fully editable. Find out how in the video below.

Editing the Planned Absence Trigger Form:

The Line Manager Decision

When a manager views the decision screen, they will see all the data captured in Step 1.

• If they click YES: The workflow instantly jumps to the Cover Checklist and Arbor MIS sync.

• If they click NO: The workflow stops immediately, and the Rejection Update email is dispatched to the staff member containing the manager’s reasons.

If you're happy with the Decisions in the templates you can leave them how they are. If you want to edit them or add additional this video shows how you add/make changes and add updates.

Setting up a new Decision step/making changes to a Decision step with reminders:

The Arbor MIS Sync

The Arbor Data step will push the data directly into your MIS backend. To ensure the information reaches the correct staff record, the workflow must "map" the information captured in the forms to the fields in Arbor. The required field and required format have already been configured in the template. 

This video explains the step:

Arbor Data step: Adding a Staff Absence:

The Publish Tab and Testing

Once the workflow has been reviewed and edited if necessary it is time to review the information on the 'Publish' tab and test the workflow. Here you can signpost certain tags, documents or information from the workflow. The following articles will go through this in detail:

Issue Checker 

MyThings

Testing a Workflow

Publishing a Workflow

This video demonstrates how this could work with the template:

Adding information in the Publish Tab and Testing the Workflow:

Publishing the Workflow and making it available to Staff.

Now that you have tested the workflow you are ready to roll it out. This video details how:

Publishing your workflow and making it available to staff:

Best Practices for Absence Workflows

• The Approval Loop: Always ensure a Decision step precedes the MIS update. You don't want unauthorised absences appearing in MIS data.

• Use Updates: Add an Update to the previous step so the staff member receives an automated email or notification the moment their absence is successfully synced to Arbor.

   

Troubleshooting

• Staff Record Not Found: Ensure the email address entered in the workflow form matches the primary business email recorded in the Arbor MIS Staff Profile.

• Duplicate Records: If a workflow is "Rewound" and re-submitted, be sure to check if a record was already created to avoid duplicates in the MIS.