Managing vacation days with Jira and Confluence

[Dong Park]

https://www.atlassian.com/blog/inside-atlassian/managing-vacation-days-jira-confluence

This seems easy thing to do but can't find anywhere how I can accomplish this.

How do I accomplish the bold statement?  I'm assuming from workflow with post function?  Or is there a config I need to set it up?  Thanks!

"Confluence Team Calendars allows teams to plot Jira issues on a team’s calendar in Confluence. When a manager approves a leave request, the request is automatically plotted on the calendar. Confluence uses the dates the employee first submitted when creating the leave request in Jira Service Desk."

[Kat Warner]

The end-user experience is easy - but there is a lot of config to get make experience available.

Do you have a Jira Service Desk project specifically for tracking leave?

[Dong Park]

Hi @Kat Warner 

No, I created one as Request Types and added in Confluence Team Calendar as Jira Issue Dates.  This kinda works,  user sends the request, adds into the Team Calendar automatically but I prefer to add into the calendar after the approval though. 

Thanks!

[Thomas Chung]

The blog makes it sound like configuration-free integration. The actual setup has enough moving parts that it's worth walking through, because the timing issues surprise people.

 
Step-by-step:

1. JSM project for leave requests: approval workflow as you'd expect (Open → Pending → Approved → Done)
2. Start Date / End Date fields on your leave request issue type
3. Confluence Team Calendar: add a "Jira Issues" source pointing at your leave project. Use Start Date and End Date for calendar display
4. Filter the calendar source to "Approved" status only, so pending requests don't clutter the view

Two things that trip people up:

• The calendar refresh isn't instant. There's typically a delay of a few minutes between the issue transitioning to Approved and it appearing on the calendar. If your team is used to Google Calendar's real-time behavior, this feels slow.
• Cancellations are a second workflow problem. If someone cancels approved leave, you need a "Cancelled" status that's excluded from the calendar filter. Otherwise cancelled leave stays visible.

What you won't get: leave balance math, overlap warnings (too many people off at once), public holiday awareness, a "who's out today" summary view. Those are all custom work if you stay native.

For a small team with predictable leave patterns, this setup can work. The failure mode is that it works at 5 people, strains at 15, and breaks at 50, mostly because manual balance reconciliation stops scaling.