How to Approve Time Off in Microsoft Teams

A request lands while you're mid-meeting. You don't want to open a portal, find the right tab, and squint at a balance. You want to read it, check the calendar, and tap Approve without leaving the chat you already live in.

That's the whole point of approving time off inside Microsoft Teams. Below is exactly how it works for managers, including the routing and hand-over rules that decide which requests reach you in the first place.

This is a manager-side guide to running leave inside the tools your team already uses. If you're still designing the rules behind it, start with how to set up leave policies, and the docs cover the integration setup step by step.

Install TimeLeaf from the Microsoft Teams store, or set up the bot first with the Microsoft Teams leave management guide.

How do you approve a time-off request in Microsoft Teams?

When an employee submits a request, TimeLeaf sends an approval notification straight to the responsible manager in Teams. You read the details and approve or decline right there. The days are reserved from the moment the request is sent.

Here's the flow end to end:

No portal hop required for the routine yes/no.

What does a manager see in the Teams approval message?

The Teams notification gives you enough to decide without digging. You see who's asking, the leave type, the dates, whether it's a full or half day, and any note or required documentation they attached.

That context matters because a good approval is a fast one. Before you tap approve, the things worth a glance:

• Who else is off. The request shows how many others on the requester's team you can see are already off, and the who's-off calendar shows who.
• Blackout periods. If the dates fall inside a restricted peak window, TimeLeaf warns you and flags it, but it does not hard-block the request. You stay in control and can approve an exception or override.
• Overlaps. Conflicting requests are surfaced for you to decide, not auto-rejected.

Routing: direct manager, multi-level, or a named approver

Who receives a request depends on the approval workflow your admin configured. By default, requests route to the employee's direct manager, or up the fallback chain to an admin if no manager is assigned.

TimeLeaf supports four routing types:

• Direct manager is the default. Goes to the person the employee reports to.
• Multi-level sends a request to the manager, then to the next level up, once it crosses a day threshold you set (for example, anything over five days needs a second sign-off). Multi-level is available on Professional and above.
• Named approver means a specific person owns approvals for a specific leave type. Parental leave can always route to HR, for instance, regardless of who the manager is. This is available on Business and above.
• Auto-approve approves a leave type the moment it is submitted, with no manager touch. It works on every plan.

Single-level approval and the Teams notifications themselves both work on every plan, including Starter. For the policy side of all this, see how to set up leave policies.

Approval chains are part of TimeLeaf's leave management.

What happens when nobody answers?

Two optional settings, both off until your admin sets them, cover the request that slips past you while you're heads-down or out of office:

• Chase after N hours. Under Settings → Working Time, the next approver up the chain is told about a request that has waited that long. They still cannot approve it.
• Hand-over on a workflow step. On a multi-level workflow (Professional and above), a step can hand over after set hours. The next person up the chain may then decide it too, and is notified in the app.

Either way, the employee doesn't have to chase you in a separate DM.

Approval delegation: covering while a manager is away

When you're the one taking time off, you can delegate your approvals for a date range so requests don't pile up behind you. Whoever you nominate receives your team's incoming requests in Teams for the window you set.

This solves the classic gap: the approver goes on holiday, and suddenly nobody can sign off on anyone else's holiday. With delegation set:

• Requests that would normally reach you route to your stand-in for the dates you specify.
• The handoff is scoped to that range and reverts automatically when it ends.
• Your team keeps moving without a manual reassignment scramble.

Set it before you leave, and the queue stays clear while you're out. It pairs naturally with the settings above; both exist so no request is ever stuck waiting on one unavailable person.

Declines and cancellations: how days are released

When you decline a request, its reserved days are released. When an already-approved request is later cancelled, TimeLeaf releases the days back to the employee's balance automatically.

Requests move through four clear statuses so there's never ambiguity about where a balance stands:

• Pending: submitted, awaiting your decision. Its days are reserved.
• Approved: you signed off. The days count as used, calendar updated.
• Declined: you said no. The days are released.
• Cancelled: a previously approved request is withdrawn. The days are released.

That symmetry is what keeps allowances accurate as plans change. An employee who books a week, then cancels because a project shifted, gets those days straight back without anyone editing a spreadsheet.

Approving time off in Teams is meant to be a five-second decision with the full picture attached. Set your leave policies and routing rules once, and the requests come to you already framed. Ready to try it? Start a free trial and approve your first request from Teams today.

The same flow works in Slack. See time off in Slack and Microsoft Teams.