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You can delegate your workflow responsibilities to another user to ensure approvals continue in your absence. This process is called workflow substitution and allows trusted colleagues to authorise documents on your behalf while you're on holiday or away.
User delegation enables a temporary reassignment of approval duties for a specified period. It’s especially useful for maintaining continuity in business processes during planned leave, sickness, or other absences.
Example:
A manager going on holiday for two weeks can delegate their approval responsibilities to an assistant. Once the substitution is active, the assistant can approve workflows on the manager’s behalf until they return.
Note: Users can only enable or disable substitutions that have been pre-assigned to them by an administrator. The list of approved substitutes must be configured in advance by your administrator.
How to do it:
1. Navigate to My Substitutions.
This will then show all the My Substitutions that have been set up.
2. Select the workflow(s) you wish to delegate.
3. Select Enable to assign the substitute user(s) for the selected workflows. Note: you will only be able to Enable Users if Substitute(s) have been assigned.
4. Set the start and end dates for the delegation period.
5. Click Apply and save.
Note: Workflow substitutions users are set up and managed by system administrators to ensure that authorisation tasks are properly handled when a user is unavailable. As an end user, you can’t assign your own substitutes - but you can enable or disable any substitutes that have been pre-approved for you via the My Substitutes section, as explained above.
For example, if you're an approver and want the CEO to act on your behalf, you won’t be able to select them unless an administrator has already included the CEO in your list of approved substitutes. Once assigned, you can enable or disable that substitution whenever needed, such as when you're away or back in the office.
For Administrators:
How to assign substitution permissions:
1. Go to Workflow Substitution.
2. Select the User(s) who you wish to set up the substitutions for - multiple Users can be selected if assigning the same Substitute.
3. Select Assign Substitute(s) or New Substitution if you have not got any users set up yet.
4. If you're creating a new substitution, select the user and the specific workflow(s) the substitution should apply to.
5. Add one or more Approved Substitutes for the user.
6. Click Apply and Save.
Once saved, the user will be able to see these approved substitutes under their My Substitutions screen and can then enable/disable them as needed.
Tip: Administrators can pre-assign multiple substitutes for each user so they have flexible options when activating coverage during their absence.
Note: Substitutions only take effect when enabled by the user, so it’s important to communicate with them before their leave begins.
We have some help guides that will take you through the steps to get these set up.
To watch a demo video: Workflow Substitutions
To access the ‘My Substitution’ guide, please click here.
To access the ‘Workflow Substitution’ guide, please click here.
How to change workflow approvers
How do I assign Substitutes for workflow approvals
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