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SharePoint travel request web part

SPHub Travel Requests is a SharePoint Online web part for business travel requests: an employee describes a trip with its dates and estimated costs, and an approver accepts or rejects it, all in one SharePoint list in your own Microsoft 365 tenant. It is called Travel Requests in the web part picker and in the setup wizard, and it ships inside SPHub rather than as a separate install.

The list the setup wizard creates

SPHub Travel Requests stores its requests in one SharePoint list, SPHubTravelRequests, which setup creates with thirteen custom fields beside SharePoint’s own Title. Setup also creates the site pages that host the my-requests, pending-requests, new-request, update-request and recycle-bin views.

Fields in the travel list

type and rule
  • Reason for travelMultiple lines of text.
  • RequesterA person column.
  • Travel TypeA choice: Domestic, International, Business Travel, Personal Travel, Conference, Training, Meeting or Other.
  • DestinationA single line of free text.
  • Travel start dateRequired. A date and time.
  • Travel end dateRequired. A date and time.
  • AirlineA choice column with five sample entries that also accepts a typed value.
  • Estimated airfareA number.
  • HotelA single line of free text.
  • Estimated hotel costA number.
  • Approved?Required. Yes or no, starting as no.
  • Approval StatusA choice: Pending, Approved or Rejected, starting as Pending.
  • Is ActiveYes or no, starting as yes. The recycle bin view uses it.

The list has no field for trip length or for the estimated total. The form calculates both and does not store them.

The travel request form

The travel request form is a two-step wizard: Trip & Schedule collects the title, destination, dates and reason, and Costs & Approval collects the airline, hotel, cost estimates and attachments.

  • Required fields and dates

    Title, destination, start date, end date and reason for travel are required. The start date cannot be in the past, and the end date cannot be before the start date.

  • Trip length

    The form calculates the trip length in days from the two dates, and a trip that starts and ends on the same day counts as one day. The result appears in the form and is not stored in the list.

  • Cost estimate

    Airfare and hotel cost are plain numbers, and the form adds them into an estimated total that it shows but does not store. The form puts a dollar sign in front of the amounts, and the list has no currency column.

  • Airline and hotel

    Airline and hotel are optional, and the hotel is free text.

  • Attachments

    Attachments are saved as file attachments on the request’s list item. The picker accepts JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF and WebP image files.

  • Starting status

    A new request starts with Approval Status set to Pending and Approved? set to no.

  • Editing a request

    The update form reopens the same two steps with the saved values filled in. It opens from the edit button in the request lists.

Views, search and export

SPHub Travel Requests has four list views: All Travel Requests, My Travel Requests, Pending Travel Requests and Travel Requests Recycle Bin.

  • All Travel Requests

    All Travel Requests lists every active travel request, most recently modified first, with a search box, a Choose columns control and an Export button that writes a CSV file. The column choice is remembered in the browser, not in the list. This is also the view the web part shows when the page address names no other view.

  • My Travel Requests

    My Travel Requests shows only the requests that the signed-in user created, matched on the user’s email address.

  • Pending Travel Requests

    Pending Travel Requests lists the active requests whose Approval Status is Pending, with the same approve and reject buttons as the all-requests view.

  • Delete and the recycle bin

    Deleting a travel request is a soft delete: it sets Is Active to no, and the request moves to the Recycle Bin view, where it can be restored. This is a flag inside the list, not SharePoint’s own recycle bin.

Approving and rejecting requests

In SPHub Travel Requests, approve and reject buttons appear in the all-requests and pending-requests views, and only for people who belong to a SharePoint group named SPHub Approvers.

  • You create the group

    Setup does not create the SPHub Approvers group, so an administrator creates it in SharePoint and adds the approvers.

  • What the buttons do

    The approve button sets Approval Status to Approved, and the reject button sets it to Rejected. A decided request shows a status badge in place of the buttons.

  • A display rule, not a permission

    The group check decides who sees the buttons. It does not change who can edit the list, which stays under your SharePoint permissions.

  • One step

    Approval is a single step: one member of the group decides, and the code has no multi-level chain.

Email notifications

Saving a new or updated travel request emails the module’s contact person, and nothing is sent until a contact person is set.

  • Who gets it

    The contact person is chosen on the SPHub Settings page for Travel Requests, with a people picker that takes one person.

  • How it is sent

    SPHub sends the message through Microsoft Graph from the signed-in user’s own mailbox, and a copy lands in that user’s Sent Items. A failed email never blocks saving the request.

  • What it says

    The email text comes from templates in the SPHubMailTemplates list, which your team can edit. Setup includes one template for new and one for updated travel requests, carrying the requester, date, destination, departure and return dates, purpose and estimated cost.

Where the data lives

Travel data lives in the SPHubTravelRequests list on your own SharePoint site, inside your Microsoft 365 tenant, and SPHub keeps no copy of it. Attachments are files on the list items, so they sit in the same place.

  • An ordinary list

    You can open, export, back up and audit the list with the SharePoint tools you already use.

  • Your permissions apply

    SharePoint decides who can read and edit the list, and SPHub adds no permission model of its own.

  • One outbound call

    The only call SPHub makes outside Microsoft is a licence check that sends your tenant ID; the security page explains it.

Permissions and limits

SPHub Travel Requests sends its notification email with the Mail.Send Graph permission, and its forms have no people picker. The contact-person picker on the SPHub Settings page uses People.Read, and the security page sets out all three of SPHub’s Graph permissions.

  • In Microsoft Teams

    In a Teams tab the web part always opens on All Travel Requests, because outside Teams the view is chosen from the page address.

  • Columns the form does not fill

    The list has a Travel Type column and a Requester column that the shipped forms never write to. The person who created a request is SharePoint’s own author of the item, which the lists show as Requested By.

How you get it

SPHub Travel Requests ships inside SPHub, and every SPHub plan includes every web part, so it costs nothing extra. The setup wizard creates its list when you enable the module, the web parts page lists the rest of the set, and pricing has the plans.

Questions

  • Can employees see each other’s travel requests?

    Each person sees the requests that their SharePoint permissions on the list allow, because the all-requests view adds no filter of its own. The view asks SharePoint for every active request.

  • Is the trip length stored in the list?

    The trip length is not stored: the form calculates it from the start and end dates, and the list has no field for it.

  • Can I change the airline choices?

    Airline choices can be changed: the dropdown reads its choices from the list, and an administrator can add or remove them on the SPHub Settings page.

Other SPHub module pages

Travel requests is not the only SPHub module with a page of its own: annual leave, expenses, asset management and issue tracking each have one.

Module pages

what it is
  • Annual leaveA SharePoint leave request web part: employees submit leave through a two-step form and approvers review the requests in a list.
  • ExpensesA SharePoint Online web part for expense requests: an employee submits an expense with its receipt, and an approver accepts or rejects it.
  • Asset managementA SharePoint asset management web part that keeps a company’s equipment inventory in one SharePoint list.
  • Issue trackingA SharePoint issue tracking web part that logs problems in one SharePoint list; each issue can carry a priority, a status, an assignee and attachments.

See travel requests run in a tenant you control

Install SPHub on a development site, enable Travel Requests, and submit a request to see the form, the views and the approval buttons.

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