You’re successfully using manager and employee self-service with Vista Workflow for key business processes, such as performance reviews and requesting time off. Everything is running smoothly until you encounter these two scenarios:
- Managers (approvers) are not always available when approval requests come their way. They might be on vacation, sick, or otherwise indisposed.
- Some senior managers might prefer that their assistants handle certain types of requests (e.g., vacation requests).
Vista handles these situations with Workflow Proxies. This functionality allows managers to allow someone else to handle their workflow tasks. Workflow Proxies can be configured to accommodate virtually any scenario.
 | Tell Vista who should handle your workflows anytime you are sick or are otherwise taking time off (PTO). |
 | Specify explicit time frames (e.g., when you are not on PTO but know that you will be otherwise busy) during which you want a proxy. |
 | You can even tell Vista to allow an individual to always handle certain types of workflow approval requests (regardless of your availability). |
You can define proxy situations that combine different elements of the above, allowing one person to be your proxy for certain things and another person to be your proxy for others. You can even specify what should happen if your proxy happens to be unavailable at the same time you are.
While an administrator can define proxies, Vista also allows you to grant security access for individuals to set up their own proxies through the self-service Preferences screen. This way, you don’t have to worry about it at all.
This article is part of the Workflow Best Practices series. Click here to read our previous article on this topic, Handling Execution Step Errors. Or, continue to our next article on the Issue Detective.
Marco Padovani
Senior Development Manager | PDS
mpadovani@pdssoftware.com