Simplify

OutSync: Leave, Vacation & Out of Office with Google Sync

What is OutSync?

OutSync is an employee time-off and leave-management app for Atlassian Confluence and Jira. Employees request vacation, sick, or other leave from a simple self-service screen; approvers review and decide from a queue scoped to their own teams; and everyone can see who’s actually out — directly on a Jira board or a Confluence space — without leaving the tool they already work in.

OutSync is delivered as two separate Forge apps:

  • OutSync for Jira – request, approve, and track leave for Jira projects; a “who’s out” panel on the board itself
  • OutSync for Confluence – the same request/approval workflow, plus a Team Availability view for Confluence spaces

Each app works independently within its product, with its own team configuration, approvers, and accrual policy.

Built entirely on Atlassian Forge. The only thing that ever leaves Atlassian’s infrastructure is an optional, explicit connection to Google Calendar — and only if an admin turns it on. Everything else — leave requests, balances, approver configuration, audit history — is stored inside Atlassian’s own Forge storage for your site.

Features

  • Self-service leave requests Employees pick a team, a leave type, a date range, and submit — their running annual balance updates automatically once a request is approved, with pending requests shown separately so nothing is double-counted before it’s decided.

  • Configurable accrual policies Set an org-wide default (days per year, whether half-day increments are allowed, how many unused days carry over into the next year, up to a configurable cap) — teams inherit it automatically, with no per-team setup required unless you want one.

  • Flexible approver configuration Assign specific approvers per team, or set one org-wide default that every team without its own override falls back to. If neither is configured, OutSync falls back automatically to the Jira project lead or the Confluence space’s admins — there’s always a working approval path, even for a team an admin hasn’t touched yet.

  • See who’s out, right where you work A “who’s out” panel lives directly on the Jira board (as a board action) and on the Confluence space (as a Team Availability tab) — with a forward-looking window (Today, Next 2 weeks, Next month), so planning around an upcoming absence doesn’t require checking a separate calendar or spreadsheet.

  • Optional Google Calendar sync Connect one organization Google account and OutSync automatically creates and maintains a shared Google Calendar per team — approved leave appears on it (and disappears if later revoked) with no manual upkeep. Entirely optional: every other feature works the same with or without it, and turning it on or off never blocks an approval.

  • Public holidays don’t eat into anyone’s balance Configure a public holiday region per team (currently US, GB, or DE) and OutSync automatically excludes those dates from the balance a leave request deducts — an employee out for a week that includes a public holiday is only charged for the days that were actually theirs to take.

  • Manual members for people without an Atlassian account Contractors, or anyone your organization tracks leave for without giving them a Jira or Confluence login, can still be added to a team and have leave logged on their behalf by an admin.

  • Full audit trail Every admin override — an approver change, a bulk log-leave action, an accrual policy update — is recorded with who did it and when, so “why does this team’s approval queue look like this” always has an answer.

  • Enterprise-ready Forge architecture Runs on Atlassian Forge, backed by an automated test suite covering the approval workflow, accrual math, holiday exclusion, and board/space visibility. Google Calendar sync — the one integration that does leave Atlassian’s infrastructure — is fully optional, explicitly opt-in per organization, and its own connection health is monitored and surfaced in the UI if it ever needs attention.

How it works

  1. An employee opens OutSync from the Jira or Confluence general access screen, picks their team, and submits a leave request
  2. The request goes to that team’s configured approver(s) — a team-specific override, an org-wide default, or (if neither is set) the Jira project lead or Confluence space admins
  3. An approver reviews the request from their own approval queue — which spans every team they approve for, not just one — and approves or rejects it
  4. Once approved, the leave shows up in the “who’s out” board/space panel for anyone planning around it, and — if Google Calendar sync is connected — is added automatically to the team’s shared calendar
  5. If a request is later cancelled or an approval revoked, OutSync updates the same places automatically — the balance, the “who’s out” panel, and the calendar event all stay in sync

Research and practical guides

Get started

Install OutSync from the Atlassian Marketplace — free for up to 10 users:

Questions about the Jira or Confluence app? Reach out via Contact.