This article focuses on workflows. You can start to create and monitor all your workflows from the Workflow Hub.

This article describes how to configure rulesets for special approval workflows that deviate from the default approval workflow. 

What Are Rulesets in Approval Workflows?

In some cases, it is necessary to exempt certain employees from a default approval workflow and set up a different process either for individuals or groups of employees. In Personio, this can be set up by adding special rulesets for absence types, attendance or employee data. Rulesets are specific rules that set different approval processes for specific employee groups defined by an employee filter. 

Creating a Ruleset

1. Configuring Employee Filters

Before setting up a ruleset, you need to configure employee filters to ensure the approval workflow is only applied to a certain group of employees. 

1. Navigate to Settings > Approvals and choose the desired absence, attendance, or employee information tab. 
2. Go to Manage Employee Filter. 
3. Create a new employee filter by selecting Add new Filter and then click on the plus symbol.
4. Define the desired filter criteria using Add Rule and save the settings as soon as you have selected all required criteria.

The default approval process will automatically be applied to all employees who do not meet the defined criteria.

The following rules apply to the employee filter options:

• At least one rule must be defined for each employee filter.
• An employee filter cannot store more than one equals rule for the same attribute because filter criteria are always linked by AND-logic, so that the filter will only be applied to employees who meet all of the criteria entered.
  Example: If the rules in an employee filter are Department equals Marketing and Department equals Sales, Personio would search for all employees who are in both the Marketing Department AND in the Sales Department.
• Within an approval area, there can be no overlap between multiple employee filters or rulesets. Each employee can only be subject to one ruleset.
  Example: To set up a non-standard approval process for leave requests for all Marketing Department employees, you create a ruleset for the filter Department equals Marketing (shown in blue in the example below).
  To define a dedicated process for employees at the New York office, you set up a ruleset for the filter Office equals New York (shown in white in the example below).
  This combination creates a problem, in that the employees of the Marketing Department in New York are now included in two different filters. In this case, Personio cannot assign a unique approval process and defaults to the first created ruleset.

If there are overlapping rulesets applied to the same employee, the first created ruleset will be applied. Therefore, please ensure that only one ruleset is applicable for each employee.

2. Adding a New Ruleset

After having successfully set up the employee filter, you can add the ruleset for the employees contained in the filtered group.

1. Navigate to Settings > Approvals and choose the desired absence, attendance, or employee information tab. 
2. Click on Add new Ruleset.
3. Select the desired employee filter, and click on Add.
4. Click on Add Approval Step to define the approval steps and save your entries as soon as you have set the required steps.

For special approval Workflows, you can add one to six approval steps. For each approval step, you can choose from four approver options from the drop-down menu: