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Leave and Absence in Microsoft Teams

Post Author: Joe D365 |

What’s Dynamics 365 Human Resources doing in Microsoft Teams? Microsoft is in prime innovative and adventure mode during which it has tightly integrated one of the desired self- service features between Dynamics 365 Human Resources and Microsoft Teams: the released preview feature of the app contains the self-service activities of Leave and Absence.

The out-of-the-box integration covers at a high level:

  • Accessing all your leave balances directly in Teams
  • Submitting time-off requests
  • Viewing the progress of time-off in real time

Note: The feature is still under preview mode and is applicable for sandbox and trial environments only (no production). Microsoft is releasing features regularly related to this app.

How to Activate the Feature

Add the app in Teams 

In the Teams app, click on the ellipses as shown below and search for Human Resources. You will find the Preview app as shown below:

Click Add to add the app to Teams.

Log in to the HR App in Teams

Once you have added it, you can access the app but will need to sign in for the first time:

Note: Before you sign in, ensure your user account already exists in the respective D365HR environment and is activated with corresponding roles.

If you have multiple environments, you can choose the respective environment from the settings section of the app. Once logged in, you will see a welcome message from the Human Resources bot. The bot guides you on what you can do in the app, e.g., request time off, view balances, and so on.

Also, you can Enable notifications for Teams app in D365HR. If you enable that, bot will notify if the leave request is submitted successfully and will notify once it’s approved. By default, it will enable notifications for all the active users in D365HR.

As an individual user, I can opt-out from my user options settings in D365HR:

How this App Helps Employees in Teams

Chat section in the app – What you can do? 

The chat section is guided by an interactive bot – quite a unique feature in Teams – that interacts with you and provides information related to the app. In the What can I do? field, type View balances (for example).

Another example: ask specifically for your balance in a particular leave type (or simply click on the leave type in the above screenshot).

You can even request time off directly from the message shown above. Click Request Vacation time off to see the screen below where you can enter Start date and End date and either Save as draft or Submit request.

Once the request is submitted, the bot will let you know it was submitted for approval successfully, as shown below:

Once approved, the bot will notify you:

Time-off Section in the App – What can you do?

The section works in the same way. You log in to ESS and go to your Leaves-related self-service activities. In this section, you can:

  • Request a new leave
  • Check balances
  • View upcoming leaves
  • View all leave requests

You can create and submit time-off requests as shown below:

If the request submitted from Time-off section is approved, you will receive a typical notification in Teams:

And you can see the approved request details directly in Teams, so you don’t need to go to ESS:

Send Upcoming Time-off Details to Your Peers

Go to the chat section and find the peer with whom you want to share the information. In the type area, there is an icon you need to select as shown below. This button will bring you upcoming and draft leaves:

Select the request and send your message as shown below:

How this App Helps Managers in Teams

Prerequisite 

Managers can also benefit from this app. But for that, you should:

  1. Have at least one direct report
  2. Manager role (optional). Yes, you can still use even though you don’t have manager role in D365HR (at least for now)
  3. A preview feature to be enabled:

Time-off section in the app

Employee, if also a manager, can now see two sections here:

  1. My time off (for self)
  2. Team calendar – Manager will be able to view approved and pending time-off requests of direct reports in a calendar view as shown below

Manager can change the calendar based on particular dates, week or month, and can view the requests accordingly.

Approve or reject the leave request

Manager will be notified of any leave request submitted from his/her direct report as shown below:

You can also view the pending leaves from Time off > Team calendar as shown below:

Now you can Approve or Deny directly from your chat space in Teams. You can even enter comments before approving it.

In D365HR, the workflow status will be changed to completed.

Isn’t that slick? Happy Dynamics 365 HR’ing!

Joe CRM
By Joe D365
Joe D365 is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 superhero who runs on pure Dynamics adrenaline. As the face of PowerObjects, Joe D365’s mission is to reveal innovative ways to use Dynamics 365 and bring the application to more businesses and organizations around the world.

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