automation.engineer

SplitTesting / Team availability / System 04 of 04

2021Recorded work

Time-off requests with calendar and approval updates

Connect a team request to a calendar event and reflect human approval or denial changes in the request’s visible status and team communication.

Noah’s contribution
Configured the request-to-calendar handoff, stored the event link and demonstrated approval and denial updates.
Historical stage
Recorded manual and status-change tests; request-form intake was not tested end to end.
Part of the business
SplitTesting overview ↗
Tools across the recorded versions
  • Monday.com
  • Google Calendar
  • Slack
  • Make / Integromat
Inside this system
  1. Workflow
  2. Key records
  3. Give a request a shared calendar reference
  4. Reflect a human approval decision
  5. Test the transitions as well as the initial creation
  6. Other systems in this business

The workflow

The handoffs
inside the work.

Follow the main path and its branches. Select a step for context; the account below explains what was built, tested or planned.

  • Monday time-off request
    Track the team member, requested dates and human decision status.
  • Create linked calendar event
    Create the requested date range and retain the calendar-event reference.
  • Store event link on request
    Write the calendar reference to the Monday request item.
  • Notify team of the request
    Send the request information to the time-off channel.
  • Human changes decision status
    A person approves or denies the time-off request.
  • Approval or denial status event
    Read the changed state for the linked request and calendar event.
  • Reflect approved state
    Update the calendar wording and send the approval notification.
  • Reflect denied state
    Update the calendar wording and send the denial notification.

Key records

The information
that carries forward.

How the information connects
RecordInformationPurpose
Time-off requestTeam-member association, dates and decision statusKeep the request and its human approval decision together.
Calendar eventRequested time range and status wordingGive the team calendar visibility of the request.
Event linkCalendar reference stored on the Monday itemConnect the tracking record to its calendar representation.

Inside the system / 01

Give a request a shared calendar reference

The time-off workflow began with a request tracked in Monday.com. In the recorded demonstration, a multi-day request was run manually. The scenario created a Google Calendar event, wrote the event link back to the request item and sent a Slack notification. The tracking record and calendar entry therefore referred to the same request.

A separate board review demonstrated adding another request and showed its event appearing in the calendar. The narrator had to adjust the user association during that demonstration. That detail matters because matching the request to a valid team member was part of the intake behavior, rather than something the downstream calendar steps could assume away.

Inside the system / 02

Reflect a human approval decision

The status-change test moved the request to denied. After the automation triggered, the calendar event’s wording reflected that decision. The narrator then moved the request to approved and showed the corresponding approved state. The workflow also included a notification to the time-off channel for the team member.

The automation’s role was coordination: a person made the approval or denial decision in the tracking system, and the connected calendar and communication followed that state. Calendar visibility did not replace the decision itself. The board review also left room to revise the desired handling of a denied request, so the final policy for every denied event is not established.

Inside the system / 03

Test the transitions as well as the initial creation

The first walkthrough deliberately separated request creation from later status updates. One trigger took roughly forty-five seconds; a later transition appeared to trigger immediately. The tests therefore demonstrated event creation and state changes while also revealing that the handoff was not consistently instantaneous.

The recording tested calendar creation and approval-state changes, but could not test the ordinary team-member form because a matching account was unavailable. The demonstrated result was a linked request and calendar entry that reflected a person’s decision.

Within SplitTesting

Other parts
of the operation.