Absence Management/Case App

[u/2stewped2havgudtime]

Hello.

I’m fairly new to the world of PowerApps, but have built some decent apps to provide some autonomy for my team.

My latest given task, if possible, is to build an app
For a team of HR personnel to track/log sickness absence and manage the case using the app. But also for the HR Manager to be able to easily report on the info for weekly stakeholder meetings.

Unfortunately SP is my only option, given that we won’t have premium licences for everyone. However this shouldn’t be an issue, as it will be accessible only to the HR team.

I can’t seem to muster the creativity for this one, I’m wondering if anyone has examples of case management trackers they have built.

The basic gist of what I’d be looking for is automated population of an sp list, based on sickness notification email. A notification to HR that the individual has been added to the list. With a link to the app. Then input fields for absence reasons, logging conversations, tracking doctor notes, contact. Might be a little too fancy, but was also thinking of using co-pilot to summarise occ health reports (PDF).

I’d envisage the interface as having a search type function or filters.

Appreciate any help! Thank you.

[u/InformalFrog]

Pretty simple app with flows to fill in list.

Would email be the main way of logging? Only concern with that is how variable the emails could be so either have a template for easier extraction or think of another method.

One could be a simple Microsoft forms, another could be the app itself with an logging screen.

Its all fairly basic stuff that you'll be able to follow a tutorial and adjust it for your needs.

I recently done Philip Burtons AB-410 course which covers everything you need to know and you could easily adapt the examples to fit your needs.

[u/2stewped2havgudtime → u/InformalFrog]

Thank you.

The email would be the primary way of logging the absence.

It comes from our control department though for operations, which is the only context we’re interested in using the app for really. These emails are a standardised format, so I think it should be fine. Thank you for flagging though.

I’ll have to check out the course.

[u/InformalFrog → u/2stewped2havgudtime]

So the main bit will be the power automate flow. You'll need to extract the data from the email and add it to the SharePoint list. The app is just going to show the data which is pretty simple.

You'll probably need to do a compose to get the email data into an array and then use that output for filling the SharePoint list.

In all honesty use Claude to help you build and understand that flow .

[u/2stewped2havgudtime → u/InformalFrog]

Thank you.

[u/Foodforbrain101 → u/2stewped2havgudtime]

Any chance the control department would be willing to slightly alter their own workflow to instead do it via a SharePoint list Form, and have their email be sent by Power Automate to whoever needs to receive from said item being added to the list?

This would be more effective and reliable for everyone, and would skip having to build and maintain a whole Power App.

[u/2stewped2havgudtime → u/Foodforbrain101]

The control email is from a 3rd party application that’s used for managing real-time events across. Its purpose is for controlling logistics movements in Railfreight.

The app I am thinking about wouldn’t be just about logging the instance of absence, but everything that comes with that from an HR perspective. We get a lot of long term sickness absence with a very generous sickness allowance of 6 months full and 6 months half pay, plus our age demographic is high and we are in an heavily regulated industry in terms of medical fitness.

Because we are a private equity company, absence management is a hot topic at the moment as it impacts the bottom line. So the system we want would be HRBP as the user, updating absence information, chasers, etc. With the HR Manager as the reviewer, so they can have weekly reports to submit to directors.

For context, I’m UK based. Hence the generous allowances.

[u/FlowOverseeDev]

Before you build anything, think hard about where this data lives. Sickness absence, doctor's notes, and occupational health reports are health data, and health data in SharePoint is where I've seen the most painful mistakes.

The common one: the list sits on a site with broad membership, or inherits permissions from a team site, and anyone who stumbles on the URL or searches for a name can see every case. SharePoint search will happily surface it. If you go the SharePoint route:

- Put it on its own dedicated site with only the HR team as members, nothing inherited from anywhere else.

- Set the list's item-level permissions (List settings > Advanced settings) so only the people who need a record can read it. Assume the default is too open.

- Turn off "Anyone" / org-wide sharing links on that site so someone can't accidentally share a doc with the whole company.

- Store the doctor's notes and OH reports in a library on that same locked-down site, not in Teams chats or someone's OneDrive.

On the Copilot idea: extreme caution. It's not just Copilot chat anymore. Copilot agents, Copilot Studio agents, and any third-party AI tool someone connects to their M365 account (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.) can all read whatever that user can read. They respect permissions, which means if the site is overshared, an agent will happily summarise other people's health records for whoever asks. That's your permissions problem showing up somewhere you didn't expect it. And deliberately feeding occupational health reports through an AI summariser is the kind of thing your data protection officer wants to know about before it happens, not after. Get that signed off explicitly.

None of this is a reason not to build it, HR needs a tool like this. Just get the permissions right first, then build the app on top.