Timesheet Approval with Approval Path for Confluence by Warsaw Dynamics
We tested 4 different scenarios to provide a good representation of how you could get a Timesheet approval in Confluence using Approval Path for Confluence by Warsaw Dynamics.
This documentation is a detailed breakdown of the 4 processes with one of the apps: Approval Path for Confluence by Warsaw Dynamics. If you are interested in the overview article, please navigate here.
1. Adding a Timesheet Report as an Image and requiring a single approver
One of the ways that you can approve a Timesheet report from Timetracker in Confluence is to export it to Confluence as an image/screenshot. Then, it’s just about adding the approval path you want.
For this first scenario, we first start by defining an approval path for a Single user to approve the Timesheets. This way, we’ll be able to have an approver look over our screenshots.
In our case, we add a single user step as an approver - Max. This means that when we choose this approval path, Max will be the one reviewing the content and approving it.
So when we select a single approver to review our content (via the approval path we just defined) we will see the UI change to inform us that the Confluence page is still waiting for the Approver’s approval (in this demo instance, the approver was defined to be Max)
If Max is taking too long to approve the Timesheet, we can send him an email reminder very easily from the app.
This email is customizable, so you can add more information in there. For example, you could copy the JQL for the report, the shareable link, and also a plea to approve the Timesheet so that you can feed your family of 9.
The approver will receive the following email:
If they review the approval, they will be able to comment on the approval and complete the process
Once everything is approved - in this case, once our single approver has approved our Timesheet for the month. Then we can proceed with whatever we want to do: send our invoice for payroll with the approved hours or start creating our invoice to our clients with the billable items.
The great thing about this is that you are notified and kept updated through all steps of the process, meaning that you will not have to guess when someone has approved the page, you will be notified via the Confluence in-app notifications as well as the Confluence notification emails.
This scenario is very straightforward, but it shows that you can add screenshots and images of Timesheets to a Confluence page and have an approval process to go with it.
The next scenario will showcase a slightly more complex approval process.
2. Adding a Timesheet Report as a .csv and requiring multiple approvers
For our second scenario, we start by saving our Timesheet report as a .csv and adding it to the Confluence page. You can do this using the “Office Excel macro” that is native to Confluence, or you can use an app on the marketplace for better results (ability to manipulate the data and better visualization options).
Then, the process is identical to scenario 1 - we’ll first start by defining our approval path: in this case, we will be adding multiple approvers.
In this case, we added multiple users as approvers (all Max in this case due to the demo instance), a Jira group - where we can define how many people are needed to approve/ reject, and an external user through emails.
Once the path is defined, we add it to our Confluence page. We’ll see the approval process as in progress with numerous people. In this multi-level approval case, we have a set order (the Maxes go first, then the user group, and finally the external user).
Because most of the users are Confluence users, then the process is the same as in scenario one: each approver will look at the Timesheet, and approve/reject until everyone has approved it.
The main difference in this scenario is that we added an external user. For example, this could be the HR manager that is not in Jira, the client, etc.
The main difference is that these external users will go through some sort of SaaS with a dedicated UI to approve all the Timesheets.
The final result looks identical to our previous scenario, in which we see that everyone has approved the page/Timesheet.
In this scenario, once the external user - who is the final approver - has approved our Timesheets, then the Timesheet submitter will also be notified of that update. Either via email notifications, in-app notifications, or in the comments.
3. Adding a Timesheet Report as a table and requiring Parallel Approvers
In our third scenario, we start by uploading our Timesheets to the Confluence page by creating a table (in our case, we essentially copy-pasted the data in Confluence and everything was taken care of). Once again, you could use additional apps from the Atlassian Marketplace to improve on the formatting options, but for our example scenario, we found that the default option did the trick.
In some circumstances, you might want multiple approvers but want to have them approve the Timesheet “at the same time” instead of having them in a specific order. This is where the Parallel Approvers come in handy: the approvers all approve the Confluence page at the same step instead of turn by turn.
And if you have an external approver, the process will be the same as the one we saw in scenario two: they will be able to see the Confluence page with the Timesheet table and approve it from the link that they’ve been provided with.
4. Rejecting the Timesheet Report
We saw three different ways to render a Timesheet on Confluence as well as three different ways to approve those Timesheets. However, what happens when you reject the Timesheet?
In this case, when someone rejects the Timesheets - that’s it, it’s the end of the road. Hopefully, the approver has added a comment that outlines where the potential mistake occurred. The submitter will then need to make the adjustments and resubmit the Timesheet to get it approved.
You’ll know when a page gets rejected as you will receive notifications for that from the app with details on the rejections.
So better fix those mistakes and get things approved if you want to get paid this month!