This is step 2 of 2 of the implementation module Employee roles and approval workflows.

Learn how to create approval workflows for absences, attendances, and changes to employee data to suit your company's needs.

What are the benefits?

• Customize your approval workflows: Ensure requests are approved quickly and efficiently by the right people, and establish up to six approval steps.
• Create special rulesets: For groups of employees to suit your company's requirements.
• Use the Workflow Hub: To keep track of approval workflows and identify bottlenecks before they cause delays. 

Step 1: Set up default approval workflows

A default approval workflow for absence requests, attendances, and changes in employee data sets the standard for all employees in your company who are not exempted by the application of a special ruleset.

To set up a default approval workflow, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Workflows > Approvals.
2. Choose an absence type, attendance, or employee data as a trigger for the approval workflow.
3. In the default section, click on Add approval step. 
4. From the drop-down menu, choose the approver from the set options:
   ▶︎ Specific employee: Choose one employee as the approver.
   ▶︎ Employee with role: Allow multiple approvers with the same role to process the request.
   ▶︎ Supervisor's supervisor: The supervisor's supervisor of any individual employee is the approver, as shown in the Org Chart view.
   ▶︎ Supervisor: The supervisor of an individual employee is the approver.
5. Add up to five more approval steps, as required.
   

   Tip
   Create a hierarchy of up to six approval steps to be completed in sequence. The steps need to be approved by each level in the hierarchy before they are passed on to the next level.

6. If needed, enable the Delegate approvals option for the specific absence type. This allows supervisors to automatically receive their report's approval responsibilities while the reports are out of the office.
7. Click Save.

Step 2: Create special rulesets

In some cases, some employees may need to be exempt from a default approval workflow and set up within a different process. You can set this up by adding a special ruleset for employees defined by an employee filter. To add the rulesets, you first need to create employee filters. 

Create Employee Filters

To create an employee filter, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Workflows > Approvals and choose the desired absence, attendance, or employee information to trigger the approval workflow. 
2. Go to Manage Employee Filters.
3. Click in the Add new Filter field and add the name of your filter. Example: Working students. Then click on the plus button .
4. Click Edit.
5. Click Add Rule and set the desired criteria from the dropdown.
6. Click Submit.

Add Rulesets

To add special rulesets for employees defined by an employee filter, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Workflows > Approvals.
2. Choose an absence type, attendance, or employee data as the trigger for the approval workflow.
3. Click Add new Ruleset.
4. Select the desired employee filter, and click on Add.
5. Click Add Approval Step.
6. From the drop-down menu, choose the approver from the set options:
   ▶︎ Specific employee: Choose one employee as the approver.
   ▶︎ Employee with role: Allow multiple approvers with the same role to process the request.
   ▶︎ Supervisor's supervisor: The supervisor's supervisor of any individual employee is the approver, as shown in the Org Chart view.
   ▶︎ Supervisor: The supervisor of an individual employee is the approver.
7. Add up to five more approval steps, as required.
   

   Tip
   Create a hierarchy of up to six approval steps to be completed in sequence. The steps need to be approved by each level in the hierarchy before they are passed on to the next level.

8. Click Save.

Note
For all employees who do not meet the defined criteria, the standard approval process is automatically applied.

Tip
For more information about rulesets and employee filters, read our article on configuring them.

Step 3: Confirm approvers have access to the data

After you have set up approval workflows for your employees, we recommend checking that all approvers have access to the data they are supposed to approve. To achieve this, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Workflows > Approvals and note which approvers have been set for each workflow.
2. Go to Employees > Employee list and click on the button with three points > Customize columns. Add the Employee roles attribute to your view and check which roles are set for the approvers.
3. Go to Settings > People > Employee roles and under Access rights for each approver's role ensure that they have access to the data they need to approve.

Note
Check if everything is set up correctly in Quality check: Access rights and approvals before moving on to the next step.