Tutorials — Travel Desk

The Quick Start tells you what each button does. These tutorials walk one real trip and one real week from beginning to end, with actual numbers, so you can see what to expect at every stage — including what the screen should say back to you.

Tutorial 1 — Coordinator: set this up for your team

You only do this once. Everyone else's setup is one click, because of the invitations you send at the end of this tutorial.

Our worked example: Keri coordinates travel for the department. She wants a FY2027 planner that everyone files into.

Step 1 — Open Setup

Open any email in Outlook, click Travel Desk on the ribbon, then open Setup (once) — travelers: just paste your code and expand I'm the coordinator — set this up for my team.

Step 2 — Make the planner

You have two routes. Take the first unless you already have a spreadsheet you like.

New planner: name it, and say which folder in your OneDrive it should go in — Travel, or a nested path like Travel/FY27. Folders are created if they don't exist; leave it blank for the top level. Click Create my planner and Travel Desk builds the workbook with all eighteen columns already correct, connects itself to it, and opens it so you can see where it landed. An ↗ Open the planner workbook link stays in Setup afterwards.

A planner your division shares is better off on a SharePoint or Teams site than in one person's OneDrive. A personal file goes with the account — when that person leaves, so does the planner. Travel Desk can write to either: make the workbook on the team site yourself, then connect it with Show my files or its link instead of creating one here.

Existing spreadsheet: click Show my files, pick it, then Connect workbook. If the sheet isn't a real Excel table yet, click Make this sheet a table — Travel Desk writes rows through the table, so this step isn't optional.

If "Show my files" finds nothing: you're signed into Outlook but Travel Desk hasn't been given its own permission yet. It will prompt once; accept, and the list appears. Being signed into Outlook and having granted Travel Desk access to your files are two different things.

Step 3 — Name the fiscal year

Set the fiscal year (e.g. FY2027) and click Save planner for this year.

This is what lets next year start clean without losing this year. Every row filed from now on carries FY2027, so the gauge in Tutorial 3 can answer "how are we doing this year" rather than blending five years together.

Step 4 — Add your travelers

Under Add your travelers, add each person — name and email — then click Write the invitation.

Travel Desk drafts the invitation and leaves it in your Drafts for you to send. Read it, then press Send yourself. Nothing goes out on its own.

What your travelers get: an email that carries their setup inside it. They open Travel Desk, click Find my setup in the blue box at the top, and they're configured — right planner, right addresses, right fiscal year. They never see a code, and you never talk anyone through settings.

There's also Generate & copy setup code under Or share a setup code by hand. Use it for someone who needs setting up over the phone. The invitation is better for everyone else, because a code someone has to paste is a code someone can paste wrong.

Step 4b — If your planner already existed

A planner made before the trip lifecycle shipped has fifteen columns, not eighteen, and close-out has nowhere to put an actual cost. Setup checks for this and shows Add the missing lifecycle columns when it applies — one click, and existing rows are untouched: they simply have those cells empty until each trip is closed out.

Step 5 — Prove it works before you tell anyone

File one throwaway request as yourself, then open the planner. If a row appeared with your name and the right fiscal year, you're done — delete the row and announce it. Finding out from twelve travelers at once that a column is misnamed is a bad afternoon.

Tutorial 2 — Traveler: one trip, request to close-out

Our worked example: Dana Whitfield, Motor Vehicle Division, is going to the AASHTO Annual Meeting in Denver, 12–15 October 2026. AASHTO is covering her registration.

Step 1 — Get configured (first time only)

Open Travel Desk. In the blue box at the top, click Find my setup.

You should see: a confirmation that setup was found, and the form ready to use. Travel Desk read the invitation already sitting in your mailbox.

Nothing found? Either your coordinator hasn't sent the invitation yet, or you deleted it. Ask them to resend, or to read you a setup code.

Step 2 — Fill in the trip

Only three fields actually block you — Name, Conference / event name, and Location. Everything else improves the paperwork.

Field	Dana enters
Name	Dana Whitfield
Conference / event name	AASHTO Annual Meeting 2026
Location	Denver, CO
Dates	2026-10-12 to 2026-10-15
Reason for travel	tapped the Committee / key member chip, then edited it

Stuck writing a justification? Tap one of the grey chips — Professional development, Committee / key member, Presenting / speaking and the rest. Each drops a sentence into the box that you then edit into the truth. It's a starting line, not a substitute for one.

Step 3 — Costs, as well as you know them today

This is an estimate. It is supposed to be an estimate. Nobody is going to hold you to the dollar.

Step 4 — Somebody else is paying part of it

Cost	Entered	Total
Airfare	420	$420
Lodging	3 nights × $189	$567
Per diem	4 days × $74	$296
Registration	650	$650
Estimated total (calculated as you type)	$1,933

Open Third-party reimbursement #1. Dana enters AASHTO, $650, and — the part that matters — AASHTO's billing contact email.

That email address is what lets Travel Desk chase the money later. Without it the trip is recorded but the debt is untraceable, which is how third-party money quietly goes uncollected.

Travelling as a group? List the others in Other travelers on this trip, one per line — Jane Doe, MVD, Field Ops, speaker. Only the name is required; blank parts inherit yours. Everyone gets their own planner row, so division totals count all of you. Use Costs entered above are to say whether those figures are per person or for the group.

Step 5 — Submit

Click Create travel request.

You should see: an email draft open for review. You press Send — Travel Desk never sends it for you. At the same moment, your row lands in the planner. If the draft doesn't pop up, it's in your Drafts folder.

Traveler	Event	Start date	Estimated cost	Actual cost	Status	Approved by
Dana Whitfield	AASHTO Annual Meeting 2026	2026-10-12	1933	(blank)	Requested	(blank)

The blanks are the point. Actual cost, Approved by and Approved date get filled in later in the trip's life — never when the request is first filed.

Step 6 — Later: booking

Once you've booked, open ✈️ My trips and click Check for booking emails. Travel Desk looks for confirmations in your mailbox and moves the trip to Booked.

Step 7 — After you travel: close it out

Open ✈️ My trips → Close out a trip — enter what it actually cost. Pick the trip, put in roughly what it cost, and click Record actual costs.

Dana's flight got changed, so the real figure was $2,050 rather than $1,933. She rounds and moves on.

Estimated cost	Actual cost	Status
1933	2050	Actuals submitted

This is a gauge, not an expense claim. The question it answers is "is travel costing about what we planned?" — and a round number answers that as well as an exact one. Don't wait until you have every receipt. Your expenses are still claimed through Workday exactly as before. Nothing here reimburses you, and nothing here replaces that.

The whole arc, on one row

A trip is one row that moves, never several rows — two rows would double-count the trip in every division total.

Tutorial 3 — Coordinator: your weekly ten minutes

Status	What just happened
Requested	You filed it
Approved / Not approved	Your coordinator decided
Booked	Travel Desk found your confirmation
Traveled	The dates passed
Actuals submitted	You closed it out
Closed	Your coordinator marked it seen

Open 🗂 Coordinator view — everyone's travel and click Load everyone's travel. Optionally type a fiscal year to narrow it.

First: the gauge

The reading comes first, because the reading is the point. It says something like:

Planned $41,200 on 22 completed trips; actually spent $44,900 — 9% over.
$18,650 planned on 11 trips still to come.

Two things to understand about that number, because they're what make it trustworthy:

Then: the one real queue

Waiting on you — approve travel. Requests nobody has authorised yet, soonest departure first. One click records your approval, your name and the date on the planner row.

Soonest-first is deliberate: the request that departs Tuesday needs you more than the one departing in March, regardless of which was filed first.

Then: a glance, if there's anything to glance at

Closed out recently. Trips with real costs in, worst overrun first. Nothing here needs doing unless a number looks wrong — Mark seen just tidies the list. This section doesn't appear at all when it's empty.

Reviewing a cost after the fact isn't an approval, so it isn't dressed up as one. There is exactly one decision in this add-in that genuinely needs a person, and it's authorising travel before it happens.

Money owed to you

Open 💵 Third-party reimbursements owed to see what conferences, associations and grants still owe, and draft the chaser.

Two honest limits

Travel Desk records approvals; it does not enforce them. There is no server behind this add-in, so it cannot stop anyone from travelling, booking, or spending. What it gives you is a planner that shows who approved what and when, without anyone re-keying it. Anything else would be a claim the software can't back up.

Actuals are for your budget, not for paying anyone back. Workday still owns reimbursement. Travel Desk deliberately doesn't duplicate expense entry — doing so would recreate exactly the double-keying this is meant to remove, and would quietly turn a planning tool into a financial system of record it has no business being.

Travel Desk — Tutorials