Over the past 24 hours, absentify was unfortunately unavailable for about 20 hours. This is the longest downtime we have ever experienced, and we want to sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this caused.

Our team worked through the entire night to bring the service back online as quickly as possible. Below, we want to be transparent about what happened and how we will ensure that something like this does not happen again.

What happened?

Last night, we made a (seemingly) small update to our Azure infrastructure configuration — an update we had, of course, thoroughly tested in our staging environment beforehand. However, after rolling it out to production, unexpected issues occurred: our service was no longer able to start correctly, and reverting the original settings was no longer possible.

At the same time, the Azure region North Europe did not have enough available resources to redeploy our services. We were forced to switch to other regions, which introduced new technical challenges and delays.

In the end, we had to rebuild large parts of our network infrastructure and architecture from scratch. This process took a significant amount of time and included several unexpected difficulties along the way.

During the day, Microsoft Azure was additionally dealing with DDoS-related issues, which temporarily prevented us from deploying new resources. Once that situation was resolved, we encountered another obstacle: our build process relies on certain assets that are retrieved via Cloudflare — and Cloudflare itself experienced outages today, which disrupted our builds even further.

In short: several external factors came together at the same time, creating a chain reaction that none of our regular procedures could have anticipated.

Why this situation was entirely new for us

• We are ISO-certified and perform quarterly restore tests to ensure we can reliably recover our systems.
• However, we have never before experienced a scenario where we could neither access Azure resources nor provision new ones.
• Throughout the entire incident, we worked closely with Microsoft. Their support was excellent, but the combination of Azure resource shortages, DDoS activity, and Cloudflare outages still resulted in a long recovery time.

Current status

• absentify is fully online again and all core functionality should be working as expected.
• If you continue to experience any issues, please notify us at support@absentify.com.
• We are closely monitoring all systems to ensure stability.

How we will prevent this in the future

A downtime of this length is unacceptable to us. In the coming days, we will:

• review and redesign our infrastructure and deployment strategy,
• introduce additional redundancies for critical components,
• expand our disaster recovery planning to include rare scenarios such as Azure region shortages or Cloudflare outages,
• and put safeguards in place to ensure a single configuration update cannot trigger a cascading failure.

Our goal is clear: learn everything we can from this incident and significantly increase our resilience so that an outage of this scale does not happen again.

We are truly sorry for the inconvenience caused and greatly appreciate your patience and trust.

Your absentify Team

We’ve refined the representative-field logic in absence requests to improve flexibility and transparency.

What’s new

• Administrators can configure a leave type with a “Representative requirement” setting of Required, Optional, or Not required.
• With this update, the representative dropdown is shown whenever the leave type is set to Optional or Required, even if few or no representatives are currently defined.
• In Optional mode, selecting a representative is completely optional — employees can submit a leave request without choosing one.

How it works

• In the Leave Type settings → Representative requirement:
• Representatives are managed in each employee’s profile (Settings → Users → Representative tab).

Why it matters

• Employees always see the option to assign a representative when the leave type allows it, but are no longer forced to pick one when it isn’t needed or helpful.
• HR admins retain control to require a representative when necessary, while leaving the door open for more flexible workflows.

👉 For full setup instructions, see the “Representative requirement” section under Leave Type settings in our documentation.

We're excited to introduce a new workspace management feature that helps Microsoft 365 organizations maintain a single, unified absentify workspace for all employees.

The problem we're solving

Many of our customers have repeatedly experienced the same issue: employees from the same organization who haven't received an invitation to the existing workspace simply created their own companies in absentify. This led to:

• Confusion within companies: Multiple workspaces for the same organization
• Duplicate data: Employees spread across different workspaces
• Support requests: Both from companies and from us
• Inconsistent absence management: Different policies and settings

The solution: "Prevent workspace creation for same tenant"

This new setting gives you control over whether users with the same Microsoft tenant ID can create their own workspaces.

How it works

When enabled:

• Employees from your Microsoft 365 organization must be invited to your existing workspace
• They won't see the option to create a new workspace during sign-in
• Perfect for organizations that want to ensure all employees join a single shared workspace
• Eliminates accidental workspace duplication within your organization

When disabled:

• Users can still access app.absentify.com and choose to either join an existing workspace or create a new one under the same tenant

When should you enable this feature?

Recommendation: Enable this setting when:

• You want all employees to use the same workspace
• You've already experienced problems with multiple workspaces
• You want centralized absence management for your entire organization

Example:Imagine you have 50 employees in your company. Without this setting, it could happen that 5 different department managers create their own workspaces because they didn't know one already existed. This leads to 5 different absence policies, 5 different vacation quotas, and 5 different approval processes.

Setup

1. Go to Settings → Organization → General
2. Find the "Prevent workspace creation for same tenant" toggle
3. Enable the setting

Important: If other workspaces already exist within your organization, you'll need to resolve these conflicts before enabling this setting.

Learn more

For detailed information about this feature and other workspace settings, visit our documentation.

This feature is now available for all absentify workspaces. Let us know what you think!

We’ve just released an update to make department management even more flexible!

Admins can now submit leave requests on behalf of employees even if the request exceeds the department’s configured ‘Maximum Absent’ limit.

This means you can handle exceptional situations—like urgent leave needs—without having to change department settings first.

Why you’ll love it:

• Keeps your ‘Maximum Absent’ rules in place for normal operations.
• Gives admins the power to make exceptions when necessary.
• Saves time by avoiding extra configuration steps.

🔗 Learn more in our documentation: Maximum Absent Settings

To try it out, simply create a leave request as an admin for any employee—absentify will now allow you to override the limit when needed.

We are continuously working to improve absentify and provide the best experience for our users. As part of these efforts, we are introducing Amplitude Analytics GmbH as our new analytics solution.

What’s New?

To better understand how our platform is used and continuously improve our services, we are now using Amplitude Analytics, with all data processed exclusively within the European Union (Frankfurt, Germany) in full compliance with GDPR regulations.

What Data is Processed?

• User interactions within absentify (e.g., which features are used)

• Registrations and engagement with the platform

• Time taken to activate an account or upgrade

We want to assure you that no sensitive or personally identifiable information (e.g., names, emails) is shared with external parties.

What Does This Mean for You?

✅ No action required – This change is already in effect.

📄 You can find our updated list of subprocessors here.

📜 Our Privacy Policy has been updated accordingly here.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at support@absentify.com.

— The absentify Team 🚀

We are incredibly proud and grateful! Thanks to your support, absentify has made it into the Top 3 best-rated apps in the entire Microsoft Teams Store. With over 2,500 reviews and an outstanding 4.5-star rating, you’ve shown us that absentify meets your expectations – and that inspires us to keep improving!

Your feedback is our motivation! We are constantly working to provide the best leave management solution within Microsoft 365. Whether it's new features, optimized workflows, or even better integration – we listen to you and continue to develop absentify for you!

💙 Thank you for your trust and your reviews! If you love using absentify, feel free to leave us a review in the Microsoft Teams Store and help us reach even more teams worldwide.

Your absentify team 🚀

We’re excited to announce that absentify – our solution for simple and efficient leave tracking – has officially received the Microsoft 365 Certification as of February 3, 2025!

What does this mean for you?

Microsoft 365 Certification confirms that our app meets strict requirements for:

✅ Security – We adhere to industry-leading security standards to protect your data.

✅ Compliance – We are aligned with Microsoft's data protection and privacy policies.

✅ Trustworthiness – Our solution has been thoroughly reviewed by Microsoft to ensure a safe and reliable experience.

Where will you see the certification?

• In our AppSource listing (with a certification badge)

• On Microsoft's documentation pages

• In the Teams Admin Center under the certification column

This certification is valid for one year and demonstrates our dedication to data security and compliance. Additionally, absentify is certified according to ISO 27001, a globally recognized standard for information security management.

You can learn more about our commitment to security here:

🔗 Security at absentify

🔗 ISO 27001 & Microsoft 365 App Certification

Thank you for your continued trust and support! 😊

The absentify Team

We’re thrilled to announce that you can now upload attachments to leave requests – one of the top-voted ideas on our feedback board! This new feature is designed to make absentify even more efficient and user-friendly for you.

Key Details:

- Essentials Plan Upload 1 document per request (up to 2 MB).

- Plus Plan: Upload multiple documents per request (up to 15 MB per document).

- Attachments are visible to anyone with access to the request details.

Enhanced Privacy:

If the Privacy setting is enabled:

- Only the requesting employee, approvers, department managers, and HR admins can view the attachment.

Learn More:

- How to configure approval and privacy settings

- How to create a leave request with attachments

Share Your Feedback!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this new feature. Let us know on our Feedback Board.

Thank you for helping us make absentify even better! 🙌

We are thrilled to share some exciting news: absentify is now an officially registered trademark! 🎉 This important milestone reflects our commitment to providing innovative and reliable solutions in absence management while solidifying our position as a trusted name in the industry.

To celebrate this achievement, we’ve also launched a dedicated Brand Page! There, you’ll find everything you need to know about our brand identity, including guidelines, resources, and the story behind absentify. Check it out here: absentify Brand Page.

Additionally, you can find the official details of our trademark registration here: EUIPO Trademark Details.

This journey wouldn’t have been possible without your trust and support. Thank you for being part of the absentify community – together, we’re building something extraordinary. 🚀

Visit our new Brand Page and stay tuned for more updates. Here’s to the future!

Just in time for Black Friday, we’ve got something special for you: Dark Mode is here! 🎉

Now you can choose whether to use absentify in Dark Mode or Light Mode – or let your system decide. Here’s how to set it up:

1️⃣ Click on your profile picture in the top right corner.

2️⃣ Select “Settings.”

3️⃣ Choose your preferred mode!

Get comfy and enjoy absentify in your style. 🖤✨