Vacation Requests by Email? That's History.

The Classic: Emails, Excel, and Hope

Vacation requests by email. Approvals by reply email. A shared Excel sheet as the vacation calendar that nobody really maintained. That was the process at a trading company with 45 employees I worked with in 2025.

The result was predictable: requests got buried in inboxes. Approvals came back after 2–3 days — if at all. The Excel file? Last updated in November 2024. New employees didn't even know it existed. And HR kept a separate list on the side — which naturally didn't match the Excel sheet.

The problems in detail:

Employees sent their vacation request by email to their manager. The manager replied — sometimes. Sometimes they forgot. Sometimes the email landed in spam. HR often only learned about approved time off when the employee was already gone. Team scheduling conflicts only surfaced when two people were absent at the same time and nobody knew why.

There was no system to calculate remaining leave. No system to visualise team absences. And no system to remind managers about pending requests.

The core problem: No consistent process, no transparency, no automation. Despite Microsoft 365 being fully licensed — Teams, SharePoint, Power Apps, Power Automate — everything available, just not used.

The Solution: Vacation Management Entirely in Microsoft 365

Instead of buying an HR tool, we built the entire vacation process on the existing M365 infrastructure. Three components, one goal: submit, approve, and track requests — in a single system, without media breaks.

The Power App: Simple Enough for Everyone

The employee app is deliberately lean. Three screens, no frills:

Submit request — The employee selects a date range from a calendar, immediately sees their remaining leave balance, and sees at a glance who on the team already has time off booked during that period. Overlaps are colour-coded. One tap on "Submit" — done.

My requests — Overview of all personal requests with status: submitted, approved, rejected. Including the manager's comment if a request was declined.

Team calendar — Who's away when? Visualised as a calendar view, embedded directly in Teams. Every employee sees their own team's absences — but only their team. Privacy-compliant, because visibility is controlled through M365 groups.

The app runs on smartphones via the Teams app — no separate download needed. This was crucial for adoption: employees open Teams, tap the app, submit the request. Everything in under 30 seconds.

The Workflow: Approvals Without Email

As soon as a request is submitted, the following happens automatically:

1. Conflict check — The flow checks whether too many team members are already absent during the requested period. If so, the employee gets a notification — the request is still submitted, but the manager sees the warning.

2. Manager notification — An adaptive card lands directly in the manager's Teams chat. On it: name, period, remaining leave, team absences during that period. Two buttons: Approve or Reject (with optional comment). No inbox to open, no document to search — one click is all it takes.

3. Automatic feedback — The employee is notified immediately whether their request was approved or rejected. Via Teams message and app update. Simultaneously, the SharePoint calendar is updated.

4. HR notification — HR receives a consolidated notification of all approved requests. Remaining leave days are automatically calculated and updated.

5. Inactivity reminder — If the manager hasn't responded after 24 hours, the flow sends a reminder. After 48 hours, the request goes to the deputy. No request gets forgotten.

The Database: SharePoint as Single Source of Truth

All requests, approvals, and calendar entries live in a single SharePoint list. This means: one source of truth. No parallel Excel sheets, no contradictory information.

The SharePoint list enables additional views that were previously impossible: leave statistics per quarter, remaining-leave overview for the entire company, analysis of absence patterns. Management gets a complete picture at the click of a button — without asking HR.

The team calendar is embedded as a SharePoint calendar view directly in a Teams channel. Everyone sees the team schedule without opening a separate app.

Rollout: 1-Hour Training, 100% Adoption

The rollout was deliberately simple. A one-hour training session for all employees — app demo, process explanation, Q&A. The app was immediately available through Teams, no IT ticket needed.

Communication was key: the CEO personally announced the switch and made it clear that from now on, only requests through the app would be accepted. No "You can also still send an email..." — a clean break.

Results

Approval time: 2–3 days → average 2 hours. Most managers approve within minutes because the Teams card is so simple.

100% user adoption after 2 weeks. All 45 employees actively use the app. Not a single vacation request by email since launch.

No more Excel double-bookings. A single data source eliminates contradictions. Scheduling conflicts are caught before they become problems.

Real-time transparency. Every employee sees in real time who has time off when. HR has the current remaining-leave balance at all times — no manual calculation needed.

HR workload drastically reduced. HR no longer spends time chasing emails, reconciling Excel sheets, or manually calculating remaining leave.

No additional software costs. Like all our M365 solutions: the entire vacation management system runs on existing licences. Power Apps, Power Automate, SharePoint, Teams — everything was already paid for.

We apply the same approach — leveraging existing M365 tools instead of buying new software — across other HR processes: from the digital applicant tracking system to automated IT onboarding with Intune, where new employees are fully set up in 2 hours instead of 2 days.

Technology Stack

• Microsoft Power Apps — Employee app (canvas app, mobile-optimised) for request submission and team calendar
• Microsoft Power Automate — Approval workflow with conflict detection, deputy rules, and reminders
• Microsoft SharePoint — Data storage, calendar view, leave statistics
• Microsoft Teams — Adaptive cards for approvals, embedded team calendar, app distribution

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