Module: Out of Office

With out-of-office management, users define absence periods and specify how approval requests are handled during their absence.

How it works

• When a workflow creates an approval and the intended approver has an active out-of-office entry (today’s date is between Start Date and End Date), the approval is automatically redirected to the configured substitute.
• The redirection is logged in the Audit Trail of the workflow instance with action type "OOO Substitution" .
• In the approval entry, the "Original Approver (OOO)" is stored, so it remains traceable who was originally responsible.

Two levels of OOO resolution

Out-of-office processing happens at two levels:

1. Level 1 (before distribution): can change the Assignee Type – e.g. from a single user to a workflow user group. Runs before the approval entries are created.
2. Level 2 (per entry): replaces individual users with other individual users. Runs within approval entry creation. Redirecting to a workflow user group is not possible at this level (it would break the group logic).

Configure out-of-office entries

1. Open AWF Setup → action "Out of Office" or search via Tell Me for "Out of Office Entries".
2. New.
3. Fill in the fields:
   • User ID: the absent user.
   • Start Date: first day of the absence.
   • End Date: last day of the absence.
   • Description: optional description (e.g. "Vacation Q2").
   • Enabled: Yes/No.

Substitute types

Rule-based substitution (optional)

Via the action "Show Rules" on the out-of-office entry you can define rule-based substitution overrides :

• The rules are evaluated against the workflow template record .
• This lets you define different substitutes for different workflow templates (e.g. "for purchase invoices user A substitutes, for sales orders user B").
• If no rule matches, the default substitution settings of the out-of-office entry apply.

Out-of-office entries apply **across companies** (DataPerCompany = false). One entry applies in all companies of the environment.