In this article:
A Virtual Team can be created to provide an additional group of users outside of the Team structure. This could be used for combining users from different Teams - such as a cross-departmental project or regions - into one group calendar.
You can also use Virtual Teams to create a more complex approval structure for certain employees if you wish to do so.
Creating a new Virtual Team
Go to Organization > Virtual Teams.
Click on the Create Virtual Team button to create a new Virtual Team Profile.
A dialog will appear, add the Virtual Team name and optionally assign a Primary Manager as well as giving the Virtual Team a colour.
Click Create Virtual Team.
The Virtual Team will now appear in the Virtual Teams list. You can open it to add Approvers, Managers and adjust calendar settings.
You don't need to have an Approval Flow within a Virtual Team.
Work your way through the tabs to change the configuration. Add employees to the Virtual Team from the Members tab. You can only be a member of one Virtual Team, so if the employee is already in a different Virtual Team they will be moved.
Click Save Changes to ensure your settings are saved.
Virtual Team Approvals
It's possible to set up Approval Flows within Virtual Teams. This is a more complex configuration so read through the following guidance, but do reach out to the Support Team for further help if you need it.
Virtual Team Approval Flows can be embedded into the normal Team Approval Flow. This means you could have Leave Requests route to the Team Approver followed by any Virtual Team Approvers or the Virtual Team approval could happen first, followed by the Team approval.
To help explain this, we will use two different scenarios.
Scenario 1:
An organisation is spread across different countries. There are members of the Marketing team located in Scotland and England.
The Marketing Team needs to have their Leave approved first by the Office Manager within the country (to ensure cover within the office) and then by the Marketing Team Manager.
We can create a Team for Marketing as well as a Virtual Teams for both Scotland and England.
On the Marketing Team Approval Flow, we can set Level 1 to use the Virtual Team.
Those employees from the Marketing Team within the Scotland Virtual Team will have their Requests initially routed to the Scotland Office Manager and those from the England Virtual Team will have their Requests initially routed to the England Office Manager.
Once either of the Virtual Team Approvers has approved the Request, it will route back to the Marketing Team Manager for final approval.
Scenario 2:
Within an organisation, there is a Development Team, comprising 1 Development Team Lead and 5 Developers.
The Developers all have their Leave approved by the Development Manager, but the Team Lead's Leave is approved by the Head of Technical.
We can create a Team which includes the Team Lead and the Developers as Members and appoints the Team Lead as both an approver and a Manager.
We can create a separate Virtual Team and add the Team Lead as a member while adding the Head of Technical as the approver and Manager.
Now, on the Development team, we can add the Virtual Team approval flow as a second level. The system will check if any members of the Team are also members of a Virtual Team, and if so, send the approval to them after the first-level Manager has approved it.
The one caveat here is that the Team Lead will need to approve their own leave at Level 1 before it routes to their Virtual Team Manager at level 2.