Automate Leave & Overtime with WhosOff Webhooks

Managing leave and overtime requests has always involved a degree of lag. A team member submits a request in whichever platform you are using; a manager gets an email notification; the email sits in an inbox while the rest of the team wonders about cover. That delay creates friction — particularly in fast-moving HR environments where visibility and speed are everything.

With this release, WhosOff now supports outbound Webhooks for core HR trigger events. Administrators (Super Users) can configure these from within the WhosOff settings panel and point them at any platform capable of receiving an HTTP POST request — which, in practice, means virtually everything your team already uses.

This post walks through every supported trigger event in detail, and then explores exactly how you can leverage these Webhooks inside Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Chat, Zapier/Make, and AirOps — with practical use cases for each.

Screenshot: WhosOff Admin Settings > Webhooks

Webhooks will be scoped to the following trigger events. All events will fire to the endpoint you supply — giving you full control over notification granularity and providing you the power to route the call within your third party applications.

Every Webhook delivers a consistent JSON payload to your endpoint. Here is an example of a leave request being submitted and the subsequent "leave.created" event being fired:

{
  "event_id": "20",
  "event_type": "leave.created",
  "created_At": "2026-02-27 11:46:41",
  "data": {
            "id": "10049172",
            "name": "Holiday",
            "staff": "Hugh Zoff",
            "approver": "",
            "status": "pending",
            "start_date": "2026-03-28 00:00",
             "end_date":"2026-03-29 00:00"
          }
}

Understanding the data path helps you plan your integration architecture, particularly if you are routing Webhooks through an automation layer like Zapier or Make before they reach their final destination.

WhosOff fires the Webhook synchronously with the triggering event — there is no batch delay or scheduled flush. Your endpoint receives the payload within seconds of the action occurring in WhosOff. If your endpoint returns a non-2xx status code, WhosOff will retry delivery with an exponential backoff, up to three attempts, ensuring resilience against temporary endpoint unavailability.

Each platform unlocks a different layer of team management capability. Below is a detailed breakdown of integration approach, configuration steps, and the most impactful use cases for HR Managers and Admins.

For organisations running on Microsoft 365, Teams is where decisions get made. Routing WhosOff Webhooks into Teams means your line managers see leave requests without leaving the app they already have open all day.

The two primary integration approaches are Incoming Webhooks (native Teams feature, zero-code) and Power Automate (for conditional logic, approvals, and multi-step workflows). For most HR use cases, starting with a native Incoming Webhook and graduating to Power Automate when you need branching logic is the recommended path.

Key use cases

• Post a formatted Adaptive Card to a #leave-requests channel whenever a leave request is submitted — showing the employee name, dates, and type
• Send a private Teams message to the relevant line manager when one of their direct reports submits overtime — removing email as the notification layer entirely.
• Trigger a Power Automate flow on leave.request.approved to update a shared team calendar in SharePoint or Outlook, keeping cover visibility accurate without manual updates
• Escalate outstanding requests (via scheduled Power Automate checks) if no decision has been made within 48 hours of a submission Webhook.

{
  "$schema": "http://adaptivecards.io/schemas/adaptive-card.json",
  "type": "AdaptiveCard",
  "version": "1.5",
  "body": [
    {
      "type": "TextBlock",
      "text": "📅 New Leave Request",
      "weight": "Bolder",
      "size": "Large",
      "wrap": true
    },
    {
      "type": "TextBlock",
      "text": "A new leave request has been submitted and is awaiting approval.",
      "wrap": true,
      "spacing": "Small"
    },
    {
      "type": "FactSet",
      "spacing": "Medium",
      "facts": [
        {
          "title": "Employee:",
          "value": "Hugh Zoff"
        },
        {
          "title": "Leave Type:",
          "value": "Holiday"
        },
        {
          "title": "Status:",
          "value": "🟡 Pending"
        },
        {
          "title": "Start Date:",
          "value": "28 Mar 2026"
        },
        {
          "title": "End Date:",
          "value": "29 Mar 2026"
        },
        {
          "title": "Request ID:",
          "value": "10049172"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "type": "TextBlock",
      "text": "Created: 27 Feb 2026, 11:46",
      "isSubtle": true,
      "spacing": "Small",
      "wrap": true
    }
  ],
  "actions": [
    {
      "type": "Action.OpenUrl",
      "title": "View in WhosOff",
      "url": "https://app.whosoff.com"
    }
  ]
}

Screenshot · Microsoft Teams + Power Automate, setting up a automate flow

Slack's Incoming Webhooks are one of the most straightforward integrations available — paste a Webhook URL from Slack's App configuration into WhosOff, and messages start flowing immediately. For teams that want interactive buttons and structured data, Slack's Block Kit format provides the richness needed.

If you want to route based on department, manager, or leave type — for example, posting engineering team requests to #eng-leave and customer success requests to #cs-ops — pair the WhosOff Webhook with Zapier or a lightweight serverless function to conditionally route payloads before they reach Slack.

Key use cases

• Post a Block Kit message to a dedicated #hr-requests channel for every leave or overtime submission — giving HR visibility across all requests in a single, searchable feed.
• DM the relevant manager immediately on a leave submission event, reducing the time between request submission and manager awareness.
• Use Slack Workflow Builder with an incoming Webhook to trigger a multi-step approval flow — collecting manager responses directly inside Slack and posting a decision record back to a Slack channel.
• Notify a #payroll or #finance channel automatically when overtime requests are approved, providing a live audit trail ahead of pay cycle runs.

{
  "blocks": [
    {
      "type": "header",
      "text": {
        "type": "plain_text",
        "text": "📅 New Leave Request",
        "emoji": true
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "text": {
        "type": "mrkdwn",
        "text": "*Hugh Zoff* has submitted a *Holiday* leave request."
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "fields": [
        {
          "type": "mrkdwn",
          "text": "*Status:*\n🟡 Pending"
        },
        {
          "type": "mrkdwn",
          "text": "*Request ID:*\n10049172"
        },
        {
          "type": "mrkdwn",
          "text": "*Start Date:*\n28 Mar 2026"
        },
        {
          "type": "mrkdwn",
          "text": "*End Date:*\n29 Mar 2026"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "type": "context",
      "elements": [
        {
          "type": "mrkdwn",
          "text": "Created: 27 Feb 2026, 11:46"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "type": "actions",
      "elements": [
        {
          "type": "button",
          "text": {
            "type": "plain_text",
            "text": "View in WhosOff"
          },
          "url": "https://app.whosoff.com",
          "action_id": "view_request"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Google Chat Spaces support Incoming Webhooks natively. In a Google Workspace environment, this makes WhosOff Webhook integration particularly powerful — you can route events not only to Chat spaces, but continue the automation chain through Google Apps Script, Google Sheets, or Looker Studio dashboards.

Key use cases

• Post leave request notifications to a dedicated HR Google Chat Space with structured Card messages showing all relevant metadata.
• Use a Google Apps Script deployed as a Web App to receive the WhosOff Webhook, log every event to a Google Sheet, and post a condensed summary to Chat — giving you both a live notification and a historical record.
• Trigger a Google Calendar event automatically on leave.request.approved using Apps Script, keeping team-wide Workspace calendars in sync without manual entry
• Use Google Chat's threaded reply feature to keep all manager responses to a request within a single, auditable thread in your HR Space.

Screenshot · WhosOff Webhook notification in a Google Chat HR Space

Zapier and Make are the most versatile destination for WhosOff Webhooks if your automation requirements involve multiple downstream systems. Rather than pointing your Webhook at a single platform, you point it at a Zapier or Make trigger — and from there, a single WhosOff event can cascade into actions across Slack, Teams, HR systems, spreadsheets, HRIS platforms, payroll tools, and more.

This is the recommended approach for HR Managers who need multi-system orchestration without writing code. Both platforms offer visual workflow builders and pre-built connectors to hundreds of tools.

Key use cases

• Fan a single leave.request.submitted Webhook out to both Slack (manager DM) and a BambooHR or Personio record update simultaneously — one trigger, multiple outcomes.
• Build a Make scenario that receives the Webhook, looks up the employee in your HRIS, calculates remaining leave balance via a formula, and posts a contextual summary to Teams rather than raw event data.
• Log every WhosOff event to an Airtable or Google Sheets base via Zapier — creating a structured, queryable audit trail that can feed into Looker Studio or Power BI reporting dashboards.
• Trigger an automatic email notification via SendGrid or Mailchimp to the employee confirming their request has been received, branded in your company tone-of-voice.

Screenshot · Make (Integromat) scenario routing WhosOff events to multiple platforms

AirOps is a platform for building AI-powered workflows and assistants. Connecting WhosOff Webhooks to AirOps opens up a category of automation that goes beyond notification — you can use the structured payload data to drive LLM-powered steps that generate context, surface insights, or assist HR Managers in making faster, more informed decisions.

This is particularly relevant for HR teams managing high volumes of requests who want AI assistance without building bespoke tooling. AirOps workflows can receive the Webhook, run AI steps against the payload, and push enriched outputs back to Slack, Teams, or an internal HR portal.

Key use cases

• On each leave.request.submitted event, trigger an AirOps workflow that checks team coverage context (from a connected data source) and generates a plain-English coverage impact summary for the manager to review before approving.
• Use AirOps to auto-draft a polite, personalised decline message to an employee when a leave request is rejected — saving managers time on communications while maintaining a human tone.
• Feed approved overtime data into an AirOps pipeline that summarises weekly overtime patterns by department and surfaces anomalies for HR review — turning event data into actionable intelligence.
• Build an internal HR assistant that can answer "who is off this week" or "has John's leave been approved" questions by connecting AirOps to the WhosOff Webhook stream as a live data source.

Screenshot · AirOps workflow receiving WhosOff Webhook and generating coverage summary

Not every platform is the right fit for every team. Use this guide to match your integration approach to your technical setup, automation ambitions, and HR workflow requirements.

Configuring Webhooks in WhosOff takes under five minutes. Here is the high-level process — your chosen platform's documentation covers the endpoint URL generation step specific to that service.

Webhooks are available to all WhosOff Super Users. Head to your Company Settings to configure your Webhook in under five minutes.