Onboarding, resignations and applications: how HR is digitising its processes with Microsoft 365

In many HR departments, processes still run on paper, email, and Excel. Contracts sent by email, holiday requests approved by replying to a message, training records in spreadsheets that nobody updates.

Microsoft 365 already includes the tools to digitise and automate these processes without purchasing any specific HR solution and without additional Power Platform licences. Some of these processes can be resolved with native M365 tools. Others, when the logic is more complex or the team needs a custom interface, require SharePoint Framework (SPFx), which lives within the same tenant and also requires no additional Power Platform licences. Throughout this article we explain how HR teams are solving these processes.

Managing holiday and absence requests

Requests arrive by email or on paper, the manager approves by replying to the message, and there is no centralised record of the team’s holiday status. When someone wants to know how many days they have left or whether their request has been approved, they have to ask. The answer, if it comes, is sitting in someone’s inbox.

Through SPFx, a request form is developed and integrated directly into SharePoint. From here, the employee manages their absences without leaving the work environment. Power Automate orchestrates the approval flow. The manager receives the notification, approves or rejects it, and the result is automatically recorded in a web part visible to the whole team. No tracking spreadsheet, no lost emails, no recurring questions. It makes sense to implement it when the team exceeds ten people and absence management starts generating more conversations than necessary.

Tracking training and certifications

There is an Excel file somewhere in a shared folder with the team’s training records. Nobody knows for certain whether it is up to date. Certifications expire without anyone detecting it in time, and when someone needs to know what training a specific employee has completed, the most common answer is “I think so, but I’m not sure.”

SPFx makes it possible to build a web part integrated into the department’s SharePoint portal that centralises each employee’s training records. Completion and expiry dates are visible and filterable by team or by person. Power Automate sends automatic alerts when a certification is about to expire, assigning the renewal task to the relevant manager. The external file disappears. This is particularly valuable in organisations with regulatory training requirements or expiring certifications, where manual tracking creates real compliance risks.

Personalised onboarding portal by profile

The onboarding process for a sales rep has nothing in common with that of a developer or an executive. Yet in most organisations the checklist is the same for everyone: steps that don’t apply, missing documents, and a process that depends on someone remembering what to send to whom.

With SPFx and integrated AI, the moment an onboarding is registered the flow corresponding to the new employee’s profile is triggered automatically. Each area receives what it needs. IT prepares access, HR manages the documentation, and the manager receives their checklist, all in real time. Everything within the Microsoft 365 tenant, with no additional licences. This type of solution is built and deployed in days. It makes sense when the organisation brings on more than 20–30 people a year with different profiles and the manual process generates recurring errors or inconsistencies.

Employee lifecycle management portal

An employee’s file — including contract, training records, performance reviews, changes in conditions, offboarding, and so on — tends to be spread across network folders, the manager’s inbox, and disconnected systems. When someone needs specific information, they have to ask the person who knows where it is. When an employee leaves, the offboarding process depends on someone remembering every step: revoking access, collecting equipment, archiving documentation.

A solution built with SPFx and AI centralises the entire employee lifecycle in a single environment. Onboarding, contractual changes, training, performance reviews, and offboarding. Each phase triggers the corresponding flow automatically, the digital file is structured in SharePoint and accessible only to authorised profiles. No disconnected systems, no dependence on anyone’s memory. It starts to make sense when the organisation exceeds 100 employees, there is significant turnover, and managing employee records consumes recurring time from the HR team.

Which process should you automate first?

The technology is already contracted. The difference lies in knowing which process to prioritise: the one that consumes the most time, the one that accumulates the most repeated queries, or the one that carries the greatest risk in terms of security or regulatory compliance. At Itequia we support organisations in rolling out these processes on top of the M365 licence they already have. For teams that want to know where to start, we carry out an initial review of HR processes at no cost. Get in touch and tell us about your case.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to get these workflows up and running? A basic workflow, such as an automatic holiday request or an onboarding checklist, can be up and running within two or three weeks. The usual bottleneck isn’t technical: it’s the lack of internal consensus on who approves what and according to what criteria. Sorting out that business logic before you start configuring significantly reduces the implementation time.

What role does AI play in these processes? Processes using native M365 tools work without the need for AI. Where AI has a real impact is in the development of solutions using the SharePoint Framework (SPFx): when the process requires a custom interface or complex logic, AI integrated into the development reduces implementation time from weeks to days.

Are there other HR processes that can also be automated with Microsoft 365? The examples in this article are the most common, but not the only ones. Other processes that HR teams are tackling using M365 include: managing performance reviews, internal communications segmented by profile or location, tracking recruitment processes, and managing requests for changes to working conditions. In all cases, the starting point is the same M365 infrastructure.