Plan requirement
| Subscription | Any plan |
| Also required | Workforce Management or Workforce Engagement Management |
| Access | Admin |
Approving and declining absence in Zendesk WFM. How quickly you answer matters more than the decision itself.
Handle them
- In Workforce Management, click Scheduling in the sidebar and select Time off.
- Check coverage for the period.
- Approve or decline, with a reason.
- Regenerate the schedule if it was already built.
Answer quickly
People are waiting to book something. A request sitting for weeks is worse than a no, because they cannot plan around either answer.
Set an expectation, such as within three working days, and keep it.
Let the easy ones approve themselves
Auto-approval rules take the requests that were never going to be refused off your list, which is the cheapest way to keep that promise. You set them on the same Time off page, per team, with your own conditions.
Two things about how they count, both easy to get wrong. A rule belongs to a team but counts across everybody: a rule for one team that approves while fewer than ten people are off checks the time off of every agent in Workforce Management, not only that team's. And where somebody sits in two teams, every rule that applies to them has to pass, not just one of them.
Check coverage, not just the balance
Whether they have days left is one question. Whether the team is covered that week is the one that decides it, and it is the one people find fair.
Say why when you decline
"Two people are already off that week, can you take the following one" is a decision somebody can work with. A bare no produces resentment and another request.
Watch the popular weeks
School holidays and the end of the year. Everybody asks for the same fortnight, and the third request is the one where an unwritten rule suddenly matters.
Agree how you decide before that week arrives, and say so.
Regenerate afterwards
Approving absence for a period already scheduled leaves a gap. Regenerating or adjusting is part of the approval, not a separate task for later.
Be consistent
People compare. Approving on the same basis every time is what makes the process feel fair, and fairness here is worth more than optimal coverage.
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