How to Configure Conditional Logic in Make.com to Streamline Complex HR Approval Workflows
In the intricate world of Human Resources, managing approvals can often become a bottleneck, delaying critical processes like hiring, expense management, or policy exceptions. Make.com (formerly Integromat) offers a powerful solution by enabling robust automation with conditional logic. This guide will walk you through the essential steps to configure conditional logic in Make.com, transforming your complex, multi-layered HR approval workflows into streamlined, efficient, and error-free automated sequences. By precisely routing data based on predefined conditions, you can ensure that approvals land in the right hands, every time, reducing manual effort and accelerating HR operations.
Step 1: Map Your HR Approval Process & Variables
Before diving into Make.com, it’s crucial to thoroughly understand and map your existing HR approval workflow. Begin by identifying all stakeholders involved, the specific criteria for each approval level, and the data points that determine routing decisions. For instance, a hiring approval might depend on the job title, department budget, and salary range, while an expense approval could be based on the amount and type of expenditure. Documenting these variables and their associated conditions will serve as your blueprint. This foundational step ensures that you capture every nuance of your process, enabling a comprehensive and accurate translation into Make.com’s conditional logic, preventing oversights and future rework.
Step 2: Set Up Your Make.com Scenario Foundations
Initiate your automation journey by creating a new scenario in Make.com. The first module you add will be your trigger, which could be anything from a new row in a Google Sheet (for expense reports or new hire requests), a submitted form (via Typeform or Google Forms), or a webhook receiving data from another system. This trigger module is responsible for capturing the initial HR-related data that will then be processed through your conditional logic. Configure this module to extract all necessary fields identified in your mapping phase, ensuring that the raw data is correctly structured and available for subsequent steps and decision-making filters within the scenario.
Step 3: Implement Routers and Filters for Conditional Paths
The core of conditional logic in Make.com lies in the strategic use of Routers and Filters. After your initial trigger, add a Router module. A Router allows you to create multiple parallel paths, each designed to handle a specific condition or set of conditions. On each connection line extending from the Router, apply a Filter. These filters are where you define your conditional rules using the data received from your trigger module. For example, one path might filter for “Salary > $100,000”, another for “Department = ‘Marketing'”, and a third for “Expense Type = ‘Travel'”. This precise filtering ensures that only data meeting specific criteria travels down the appropriate approval path.
Step 4: Configure Conditional Modules and Actions
Once you’ve established your filtered paths, populate each path with the specific modules and actions required for that condition. If a filter directs a hiring request for a senior role, this path might include modules to notify an executive approver via email or Slack, create a task in an HRIS, and update a central tracking sheet. Conversely, a path for a standard expense might simply send an approval request to a team lead and then update a finance system upon approval. This step involves dynamically mapping the data from previous modules into subsequent ones, ensuring that the right information is used for notifications, updates, and further actions along the approval chain.
Step 5: Handle Approvals, Rejections, and Notifications
Building on the conditional paths, this step focuses on the actual approval mechanism and subsequent actions. For each conditional path, you’ll likely integrate modules that facilitate the approval/rejection decision. This could involve sending an interactive email with “Approve” or “Reject” buttons, updating a record in a project management tool (like Asana or Trello) that approvers interact with, or integrating with a dedicated approval software. Critically, you must also define the actions that follow an approval (e.g., move to the next stage, update employee status, initiate payment) and a rejection (e.g., notify the requester, log the reason for rejection, send back for revision). Ensure notifications are sent to relevant parties throughout this process.
Step 6: Test, Refine, and Document Your Workflow
Thorough testing is paramount to ensure your conditional logic workflows perform as expected under various scenarios. Run your Make.com scenario multiple times with different input data that triggers each of your conditional paths, including edge cases. Observe the flow of data through filters and confirm that actions are executed correctly. Be prepared to refine your filters, module configurations, and data mappings based on testing feedback. Finally, document your entire workflow, detailing the logic behind each filter, the purpose of each module, and contact information for approvers. This documentation is invaluable for future maintenance, troubleshooting, and onboarding new HR team members to the automated process.
If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Make vs. Zapier: Powering HR & Recruiting Automation with AI-Driven Strategy
