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Extended vacation and out of office support in Next®
For those who use Next® Digital Workplace extensively throughout their organization, we now offer an extended functionality for efficiently handling vacation and other out of office scenarios.
When you digitalize your processes using Next®, one of the big benefits is the ability for colleagues to take over duties and tasks from others. With Extended out of office support, we take this to a whole new level, and allow power users to automate this.
All you have to do, is to set your status in Next®:
- Present
- Absent
- Away for the day, or
- On vacation
Then all the processes behaves exactly as you would wish for.
Some of the tasks you receive during your absence will be returned immediately with an Out of office reply. Other tasks are automatically delegated to your substitutes. Some, may stay with you, but your coworker is notified to take action. And finally, some will just have to wait for your return.
And of course, what is to happen depends whether you are gone for the day, or away on your well-deserved four weeks of vacation.
Set your status
Setting your status is as easy as a single click.
Set your status, then Next® takes care of the rest
Your daily work schedule
If you set your Standard work schedule, Next® will even do most of the status setting for you automatically.
Set your default work schedule to makes things happen automatically
When you deviate from your standard schedule - just click to set the status manually.
Planned vacations and out of offices
If you are the kind of person who plan ahead, you should tell Next® about these plans.
Setting up your planned vacations is easy
Setting up your vacation schedule is easy and seems to be an absolute minimum. Plotting in other planned events may make your life at work easier. Especially if you have workflows that relies on your immediate participation. But if it has no effect for your work with Next® - don't bother.
If you already have your vacation schedules available in other solutions, you may use the Next® API to transfer them automatically to Next®.
Unexpected absence
Sometime things do not go according to plans. A case worker may call in sick in the morning. With Extended out of office support, an authorized team lead, may set the status for this person to Away for the day. And if you already have other solutions in place with this knowledge, you can use the Next® API to set the status.
Setting up the rules
Next® comes with a complete set of best practice absence rules ready for you to use.
As an admin, you can tailor the behavior for each process, task, and notification in Next®.
Either for everyone, for a selected group of users, or even for individuals. And as always KISS applies, so don't make it more complex than you absolutely need.
You can even leave some of the rules setup with the end user.
A few absence rules are for you to set. Others you can see. And the rest just happens behind the scene.
For selected absence rules, you may leave it with the individual user to determine the desired behavior or the actual substitute.
Our experience is that the less burden you put on the end user, the better running and easier to use solution you get.
Use case examples
Depending on what processes you have streamlined, your requirements will differ.
If I myself submit an expense during my absence, it makes completely sense that it just sits and waits for my return. If one of my employees submits an expense that needs my approval as manager, it's totally fair to let them wait if I'm away for the day, but not OK if I'm on vacation. Then one of my manager colleagues must take over.
Some purchase invoices can be processed equally well by a substitute, but the ones requiring deep knowledge of the associated customer project simply cannot. They will have to wait until the specialist is back in office.
If you handle GDPR privacy requests in Next®, even a very short delay may be critical. You can then chose to set up that when such a Privacy request arrives, even a status Absence means that a colleague must be notified.
Future enhancements
In a later release you will be able to see the current status of your colleagues when you send tasks or notify them.
In a later release, you will be able to set your status in Next® Go.
For the techies
This feature is based on the same technology we use for Automatic Action Policies. For that reason, the initial releases will have limited options available in the UI, but release by release get more complete.
Commercial terms and conditions
This new optional feature comes with a separate license fee.
Basic vacation scheduling as we know it, where you can configure a substitute and mute your notifications for a period of time, remains a standard feature.
Any consultancy assistance needed for implementation will be invoiced in addition to this.
Disclaimer
Despite our best efforts, we may be forced to change both content and expected delivery of future product updates without notice.
Details
Title:
Extended vacation and out of office support in Next®
Type:
New optional feature
Status:
In planning
Release time:
May 2023
Affected products:
Next® Contracts
Next® Enterprise Archive
Next® Go
Next® Invoices
Next® Processes
Audience:
End user
Admin
Specialist
Classification:
Public
Responsible product manager:
Kim Hellum
Updated:
24.01.2023
By:
Kim Hellum