HR - Leave tracker

Hi ​@Ermacy,

I am one of the best Airtable consultants and can definitely help you with this!

Please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Best,
Scott

Thank you for your response, but right now we’re not ina  position to seek paid consulting as I’m trying to build this on behalf of my team (since we’re a small sized company), so is the option to contact you still open under these terms?

I do not offer free consulting services, but there might be other people here who do!

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

Also, you may want to explore my free Airtable training course, which you can take for free by signing up for a free 30-day trial with LinkedIn Learning. Note that the course is very outdated because it was created in 2020, but all of the core concepts still remain the same today.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

Thank you for the response!

Hey ​@Ermacy,

In addition to resources shared by Scott you can also take a look at Airtable’s Builder Certification with three different levels.

I’m sure this will be super helpful!

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation

Thank you for the suggestion Mike, will look into it!

Hmm the trickiest bit when I’m building these is dealing with yearly leave allocations

If you’re just starting out I reckon just make one base per year and then duplicate it for next year so that all your automations stick around as that’s a lot easier to set up

I’ve put something together here for you to check out that has the basics of it set up to get you started:

If you could talk about specific issues you’re facing in set up that’d be helpful too

Thank you for this, Adam! Super helpful.

Let me highlight some of the key issues I’m confused with right now-

1. I don’t know how many tables and what exactly these would need to keep it clean and simple, a lot of templates suggest different options
2.  I’m probably going to use Fillout platform for the form (new entries and time off requests), but how do I segregate the leaves, should I stick to the dropdown? 
3. Creating the Record ID, I’m not sure how to go about it either, to ensure each request has an ID, would this be essential?
4. Lastly, automating the notification to maanger when a new request has been made
   
   I plan on using the free plan, so doing all of the above would still be possible, right?

Thank you so much! 

Just to answer a few of these questions…

• There are always a bunch of ways to structure templates, what Adam provided above is the cleanest/simplest version. Look at what he provided and ask yourself what other data needs to be included, and whether that can/should be included on the tables provided. If not, then more tables are needed. 
• This would depend on your level of reporting needed, plus how many leave options you provide. 
  • One thing not included in Adam’s basic version here is approval status (Submitted, Approved, Denied). You might need a separate Fillout for approvals v requests.
• Record ID are automatically created for every record, they’re just in the background unless you create a formula field to display them. You can make a formula field with RECORD_ID() that’ll show the ID, but even without that they’re still usable in automations.
• For manager notifications, you either need to make the People field self linking or create another table for Managers. Then you can add email addresses to the relevant table and create an automation that sends an email to the direct supervisor. 

All of this is doable on the free plan, but there are some notably limitations, specifically you can only have 1000 total records in the base (so that’s all leave requests, people, managers, etc) and you only have 100 automations a month (so those manager notification emails for instance). 

One other consideration I’d make is in Adam’s setup, he’s allocating leave by whole days. You might want to include more granularity and allocate by hours instead so people can take a half day, couple hours for a Drs appointment, that kind of thing. 

"Thanks for all the support, Disraeli! I’m going to attempt creating it using the responses you've shared so far. I’ll reach out if I run into any issues. Thanks again!