Approvals Dashboard

Formerly “Workflow”, Activity approvals is a core HR feature that controls requests withing Workforce Now. This was a longterm redesign of this critical feature in response to years of low client frustration and a high number of service calls.

Background

The product team was well aware of the issues with the workflow feature and conducted intensive research and discovery to better understand client needs.

• Over 50% of clients were not setting up or managing their Activity Approvals, which are critical for monitoring and managing HCM processes (e.g., approving or communicating pay changes).

• Without workflows, changes could go unnoticed—such as a pay change being made without required approvals—leading to downstream issues like payroll errors.

• Service calls related to workflow issues were costing upward of $50K per month.

Approach

Legacy vs. New Approach: Shifting the Focus

The legacy Activities feature emphasized setup and configuration, despite these being infrequent tasks for most users. I led a review of existing research and discovery insights, organizing issues into thematic pillars based on severity and impact.

From this analysis, we prioritized troubleshooting and transparency for two key reasons:

1. These areas were the most underserved in the current experience.

2. They represented the most common client needs, such as understanding “What’s happening with activities in progress?”—a far more frequent concern than initial setup.

This shift guided a new UX direction, focused on surfacing in-progress activity insights and enabling faster, more confident decision-making.

Refocus on Monitoring & Troubleshooting

Based on insights from the JTBD framework and the Severity Map, the UX strategy was realigned to prioritize Monitoring and Troubleshooting over initial configuration. This shift reflected how users were engaging with the product day-to-day.

As a result, the configuration/setup UI was moved from the landing page to sidebar navigation, making space for a more action-oriented dashboard.

The Dashboard was redesigned to highlight In Progress activities as the primary view. Users landing on the page now see a clear overview of tasks in flight, along with immediate access to key actions: Reroute, Cancel, View Details, Approve, and Reject - enabling faster issue resolution and greater control.

Updated Design

The final design simplifies the core actions into 3 main areas ( some with new, added functionality) —

• In-progress Events
  Reroute, Cancel, and Approve

• Activities
  Preview (simulate requests from employees and managers)

• General Settings
  Access the core settings used to configure Activities

Final Output