My company (now 100 people in 4 countries) has used many vacation approval schemes in the past, ranging from trust & self-managing (in the very early days) to ad-hoc e-mails, signed paper, outlook add-ins with shared folders and now a sharepoint list with an approval form + sharepoint workflows which is unwieldy.
It's a new year, and we're looking for a better, faster, stronger system which is above all SIMPLE. I'm hoping that you guys can suggest something. I'm not against buying something in, but budget is small and we have the expertise to build in house, just not the time to design it.
We're primarily a MS shop - outlook 2003 & 2007, and in my ideal world we'd start with an outlook form submission so admins can track original requests, not worry about people fiddling with a sharepoint list after the event etc.
Basic requirements:
- Simple form submission of vacation timing including all-day / half-day options.
- Routing to line manager, then HR manager for approval (could be stored / picked from AD)
- Success response with Outlook calendar appointment back to originator and copy to public folder so everybody can easily see who's in / out on given day.
- Some way of tracking total vacation days vs vacation used (don't worry about this too much - we can code something)
What has worked well for you before?
Thanks
Update: I think we will stick with the sharepoint solution for now and see if we can improve it. Still keen to hear more suggestions though...