The Workflow Builder is where HR designs how a workation request gets approved and which custom emails are sent along the way. It has two tabs: Approval flow, where you build who approves a trip and request the change from WorkFlex, and Automations, where you set the rules for when a custom email is sent.
Where to find it
1. In the left-hand menu, open Admin management.
2. Click Company settings.
3. Scroll down and select Workflow builder.
4. Choose Workation flow and click Configure Workation.
This opens the Workation workflow with the Approval flow and Automations tabs at the top. The badge next to the title shows the status of your flow: Live, or Live · unsaved edits while you have changes you have not requested yet.
Part 1: The Approval flow tab
This tab shows your company's current workation approval flow on a canvas and lets you request changes to it. Trips booked on behalf of an employee follow a separate approval flow, as the note under the title says.
How the approval flow works
Every trip starts at Trip request submitted.
From there, branches are checked from top to bottom. The first branch whose conditions match runs. A trip only ever takes one branch.
The Standard flow at the bottom catches every trip that no branch above matched. Once you have added branches, it is labelled Everything else. It is always there and cannot be deleted or moved.
Inside a flow, steps run from left to right. A trip moves on to the next step once the current one is done.
The Risk assessment step splits a flow into three lanes, Low, Medium and High risk. Each lane has its own steps, so you decide who has to approve depending on the risk level of the trip.
Every flow ends at Trip complete: the trip is fully processed and the compliance documents are generated.
Zoom in and out with the buttons at the bottom left of the canvas, and use the fit icon to see the whole flow. The ? icon in the top right corner opens a short How this works summary.
Step 1: Start from a preset (optional)
Click Start from a preset next to the title to fill the canvas with a ready-made flow. You can change every preset afterwards.
Your flow: the flow that is currently live.
Blank canvas: starts with just the trip request. You build the flow yourself.
Standard: risk assessment with manager and HR approval. The manager approves first, then the risk assessment runs, and HR approves in each of the three risk lanes.
Risk-first: the risk assessment comes first and low-risk trips can be approved automatically. Medium and high-risk trips go through manager approval, HR approval and a documents step.
Auto-approval: after the manager approval, low-risk trips are approved automatically and high-risk trips are rejected automatically. Medium-risk trips go to HR approval.
Choosing a preset replaces the flow on your canvas. If you already have unsaved edits, WorkFlex asks you to confirm first: your current changes on the canvas are replaced, and your live flow stays active until you request the change.
Step 2: Check the Standard flow
Click the Trigger of the Standard flow to open its panel. The trigger reads All trips run through this flow and is locked. Whatever you build in this flow applies to every trip that no branch above caught, so if you want one flow for all trips, this is where you build it.
Step 3: Add an approval branch (optional)
Use a branch when certain trips need different approval steps, for example trips to specific countries or trips longer than a certain number of days.
1. Click New approval branch in the Approval blocks on the left, or click the + icon on the line below Trip request submitted. A new branch with a Trigger appears and the branch panel opens on the right.
2. Give the branch a Branch name.
3. Under the conditions, click + Condition and choose what the branch should match on: Destination, Trip duration, Nationality, Payroll country, Probation period, Destination region, Balance exceeded or Entity.
Probation period: matches when the trip starts before the employee’s probation period ends. You set the length in days, weeks or months (default: 6 months). If the employee’s joining date is missing, the extra approval applies and the reason is shown.
Destination region: for example “not in EU”. You can add or exclude single countries, for example to count Switzerland as inside.
Balance exceeded: matches when the trip takes the employee over their workation balance. It is only offered when a balance is configured.
4. Set the operator and the values. For example, Destination · is any of · Albania. Use is none of to exclude countries. For Trip duration, enter a number of days, for example is more than 3 days.
5. Add further conditions with + Condition. Click AND or OR next to the conditions to decide whether all of them or any of them must match. + Group nests conditions so you can combine them, and + OR IF adds an alternative set of conditions to the same branch.
6. Check the Summary at the bottom of the panel. It lists every condition the branch matches on, for example Matches trips where ANY of these is true.
A branch without conditions shows Not set up, and the top bar shows how many items are still to set up. Use Duplicate at the bottom of the panel to copy a branch, or Delete branch to remove it. Both are also available as icons when you hover over the branch on the canvas.
Step 4: Add steps to a flow
Each branch and the Standard flow can have its own steps. There are two ways to add a step:
Select the branch or lane on the canvas, then click a block in the Approval blocks on the left. It is added to the selected flow.
Click the + icon on the connector line where you want the step. A searchable Insert a step here menu with all step types opens.
Hover over a step to move it (drag handle), duplicate it or delete it. Use the arrow at the top of the Approval blocks to collapse the list and get more room on the canvas. A step that still needs input is marked in red, and the top bar counts what is left to set up.
The available steps
Risk assessment (Routing): splits the flow into the Low, Medium and High risk lanes. It can be used once per flow, so it is greyed out and marked In use once it is on the canvas.
Manager approval: the employee's Direct manager approves. There is nothing to configure.
HR approval: the HR team approves.
Auto-approve and Auto-reject: the request is approved or rejected automatically, without human interaction. Use them at the end of a lane whose conditions already make the decision clear.
Other approval: a custom approver, for example Finance, Legal or a Project Owner. Open the step and choose under Who approves this step?:
Specific people: the same people approve every trip that reaches this step. Fill in the Role (a name for this approval step, for example Finance, Legal or Line manager) and enter the Approver email. Press Enter or click Add after each address. Everyone you add gets the request, and the first one to approve or decline decides.
To let the employee name the approver for each trip, choose Someone the employee names. Use this when the approver changes from trip to trip, for example a Project Owner. Employees enter that person’s email in the request form, but only when the flow for their trip has this step. They can’t enter their own email. The manager’s or an HR admin’s email shows a warning but can still be used. The approval email goes to that address, and the approval page shows the role they are approving as. WorkFlex switches this option on once you have requested the change (see Step 5).
Send email: sends a custom email the moment the flow reaches this step. Under Send conditions you can optionally add conditions with + Condition or + Group. Without conditions, the email is always sent. Choose the email under Email template, which is required. The emails themselves are created in Company settings → Customize emails.
Step 5: Request your changes
Edits to the approval flow stay in draft and do not change your live flow.
Discard changes: click Discard changes to undo everything you have not requested yet. A confirmation asks you to confirm, because this reverts everything to the last saved version and cannot be undone.
Request changes: click Request changes when your flow is ready. Your request is sent to the WorkFlex team, who set up the flow with you. Your Customer Success Manager will reach out if anything else is needed.
Part 2: The Automations tab
This tab is where you bind your custom emails and trip actions to trigger conditions. Instead of relying on fixed platform logic, you decide exactly when a custom email is sent for a workation request. Unlike the approval flow, changes here apply as soon as you click Save changes. There is no request or review step.
On the left, the Rules list shows all your rules, with a search field and the filters Custom emails and Trip actions. Click New rule to create one.
Setting up an email rule
The email itself, with its subject, content and recipients, is built separately in Company settings → Customize emails. Build the email first. Until one exists, the email dropdown in a rule stays empty.
1. Click New rule and choose Send an email. The rule opens on the right. The dropdown also offers Show trip actions.
2. Under WHEN a Workation request matches, click + Condition and choose an attribute: Destination, Trip duration, Nationality, Payroll country, Entity or Domestic trip. Without any condition, the email is sent for every workation request.
3. Set the operator and the values, for example Domestic trip · is. Add further conditions with + Condition and nest them with + Group.
4. Under THEN send these emails, choose the email to send for requests that Matched from the dropdown.
5. Optionally, click + Add an email under Otherwise to send a different email for requests that do not match. Leave it empty to send nothing in that case. Click the x to remove it again.
6. Use Preview to see how the email will look.
7. Switch the rule On with the toggle at the top of the rule and click Save changes. New rules start switched off.
Every rule is checked on its own, so a workation request can match more than one rule and trigger more than one email.
Edit, pause or delete a rule
Open the rule and use the On/Off toggle to pause it without deleting it, the copy icon to duplicate it, or Delete to remove it. Changes only take effect once you click Save changes. Discard changes reverts everything you have not saved yet.
Looking for the same for business trips? See Workflow Builder for Business trips. To build the emails used in your rules, see Email Customization: A Step-by-Step Guide.