SLACAY

Satrajit Neogy
(APM applicant)
 Assumptions

- Leave Management System (LMS) already exists in company, synced to other systems
such as payroll management, performance management, employee onboarding, etc. We
assume the organization has already onboarded a suite of products to cater to the above
mentioned use-cases

- APIs for above mentioned LMS is public, hence, integrations can be build

- HR admin uploads all necessary info, such as, org structure, number/type of leaves
available, onto older LMS

- Employees using Slack are tech-savvy and can use Slack’s “slash commands”

- HR admins don’t use slack on a daily basis and would likely not being very comfortable
using “slash commands”
 User Personas
Employee, Ria, 26-
year-old software
Persona
developer, working as
an individual contributor
- Appreciates “deep work”
- Wants clarity on company
holidays to plan leaves
- Be updated on
Motivations number/type of leaves left
- Clarity on teammates’
leaves to plan/collab better
- Has to break her state of
flow for mundane tasks,
such as applying for leaves
Pain Points - Gets inundated with pings
from her teammates on
days she is off
Team Lead, Kate, 30-year-
old engineering manager,
leading a team of 8
developers
- Plan sprints and assign tasks
very methodically
- Have clarity on team’s leave
schedule while planning
sprints
- Overall morale of the team
and does her best to keep
them spirited
- Does not appreciate “pings”
which demand her attention in
the middle of focussed work
- Delays in sprint due to getting
blind-sided by scheduled leaves
which were planned earlier
HR Admin, Jill, 32 years old,
responsible for managing
HR operations for the
company
- Wants employees to follow
routine procedures, timely
- Wants to implement/edit
employee wellness plans
based on data-driven
insights
- Has low levels of clarity on
employee wellness due to
covid imposed wfh
- Does not like reminding
team leads to approve any
pending leaves
 Research Plan

- Obtain data from HR Admins on records of “leave application received at” Vs “leave applied
for date” to validate core problem statement
- Float survey to employees to rate productivity in absence of notifications, would validate
necessity to design our product in a manner that it sends out less/opt-in notifications
- Survey to employees asking “#times you need to view company holiday schedule while
planning your leave, thus validating need to have holiday calendar easily accessible
- Survey to employees, asking to rate experience of receiving pings during their scheduled
leaves, thus validating the need to build something which works towards reducing pings
- 1:1 interviews with team leads to ask, how do they view team bandwidth while planning
sprints, thus validating need to have this info on a easily look-up able UI
- 1:1 interviews with HR admins/Team leads to ask:
> Metrics of interest to gauge employee wellness/team morale
> Levels at which they would like to view/compare such data, ie, company, team, and
individual level
> Frequency at which they would like to view this info

# User Story (Feature)
1 For employee to apply for leave
without leaving slack
environment
2 For team leads to choose
notification type
3 To convey teammates when
one is on leave
User Flows
User Flows
User inputs slash command and
is expected to enter leave details
User installs slack app →
enables app → ask user for
desired setting in pop-up screen
Users to be shown signals on
person’s slack messenger profile
that person is on leave
UI & Design Release Version
Slash command → Modal
v1
containing:
- Leave-type: Drop-down (#days
left in bracket against type name)
- Date: Calendar widget (company
holidays marked on calendar)
- Reason: Free text-box
- If applying for an exhausted
leave type, message to show
“Contact HR/Team Leadr”
Pop-up with message “Enter v1
notification setting”, with drop-
down for:
#1 Instantaneous
#2 After X approvals get stacked
→ “Choose X” → drop-down,
containing #approvals
#3 After Y days → “Choose Y” →
drop-down containing #days
- Hammock emoji next to person’s
v1
name
- To show “On Leave till <Date>”
upon hover
4 For team lead to reactively
approve leaves: Slack bot
which sends notification
according to chosen
notification style
5 For employees to view leave
types and their
meanings/consequence, ie,
company leave policy
For team leads to
6
proactively approve leaves
7 For team leads to view
holiday schedule of their
team over the next sprint
cycle
User to be shown - Slack bot sends a message with text v1
employee name, leave “Please see pending approvals below”
date & reason. - Employee cards to appear (stacked in
User to input case of multiple), each card to contain:
approve/reject Icons for input info, ie, Employee name,
leave date, reason & drop-down with
options “Approve/Reject” → If Reject →
Text-box for reason
User inputs a slash Modal opens up and is populated with
command, which invokes company leave policy as uploaded on older
v1
the slack app LMS
User inputs a slash Slack bot sends message to user with
command, which invokes remaining applications to be approved in the
v1
the slack bot as in #4 similar stacked card format
User inputs slash Calendar widget to have the following: v1
command, which invokes - On days with no team members on leave,
a modal with a calendar show the date unmarked
widget - On days with team members on leave,
show the date in red, upon hover, show
employee names
- Have company holidays marked in yellow,
upon hover, show holiday name
8 For employee to receive Slackbot to send Notification from Slackbot to be triggered to v1
notification when leave notification when employee containing:
request is corresponding team lead - Approved Or
approved/rejected approves/rejects leave - Denied, with reason for denial
application

9 For HR admins to visualize User to be sent an email - User to be asked for level (org, team
leave statuses of containing link to individual)
v2
employees Dashboard at agreed- - Upon selection of org, metrics at org level
upon frequency to be shown
containing metrics such - On selection of team → Team Names
as: Leave Type1 (drop-down) → Team Selection →
%consumed, Leave Scorecards containing metrics to be shown,
Type2 %consumed, .. , metrics like: Leave Type1 %consumed,
central tendencies of time Leave Type2 %consumed, .. , central
difference b/w application tendencies of time difference b/w application
date & leave date, date & leave date, #Backdated leave
#Backdated leave approvals
approvals - On selection of individual → Table view
with rows as employees and column headers
as metrics such as: Leave Type1
%consumed, Leave Type2 %consumed, .. ,
time difference b/w application date & leave
date, #Backdated leave approvals
10 For team leads to gauge team
spirit/morale vis-a-vis
population (org level) metrics
11 Google Calendar/Outlook/iCal
integration for teammates to
know that a teammate is
unavailable
12 Gmail/Outlook/Apple Mail
integrations for “Out Of Office”
automatic reply when someone
who is on leave receives an
email
User to use slash command
to start the flow
Message to be shown to the
person on saving a calendar
on date when one/more
attendees is on leave
User sending email to any
person on leave to receive a
reply stating person is OOO
- Modal with text “See data for team v2
here” (here: CTA to dashboard link)
- 1st screen on dashboard contains
drop-down for Team/Individual
- On selection of team, table view to
open up with column headers as
“Your team,Org wise”, rows to contain
metric name, team’s score and org
wide score
- On selection of individual, table to
open up, with column headers as
metrics and rows as employees
Message to pop-up on bottom right of
the screen, <person(s)> are on leave
v2
on this day. To become stacked when
multiple attendees are absent
Automatic reply to be sent to person
sending email from on-leave
v2
recipient’s email ID
 Thank You!

In case any points seemed compressed in the slides above, please see: https://tinyurl.com/a55cypfn