--- title: "How to Hand Over Duties When an Employee Leaves (No End Date)" description: "Step-by-step guide to creating a handover of duties without an end date in Vitextra Absence & Coverage: assign the substitute, describe the responsibilities, confirm the handover and end it when it is no longer needed." url: https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10349 language: en published: 2026-10-28 modified: 2026-10-28 products: - "Absence & Coverage" author: "Lidija Reising" tags: ["handover of duties", "employee leaves company", "substitute without end date", "open-ended substitution", "offboarding hand over tasks", "Vitextra Absence & Coverage", "People Connector substitution", "SharePoint substitute"] --- # How to Hand Over Duties When an Employee Leaves (No End Date) Step-by-step guide to creating a handover of duties without an end date in Vitextra Absence & Coverage: assign the substitute, describe the responsibilities, confirm the handover and end it when it is no longer needed. ## Overview Not every absence ends. When an employee leaves the company, changes the role or goes on a long leave with an uncertain return date, someone has to take over their tasks, approvals and shared mailboxes **until further notice**. In Vitextra Absence & Coverage this is a substitution of the kind **Handover of duties**. Unlike a **Temporary** substitution, it does not need an end date and stays active until it is cancelled. This article shows how to create such a handover in the **Substitutions** web part, what the substitute has to do, how the handover looks afterwards and how to end it. --- ## Temporary substitution or handover of duties | | Temporary | Handover of duties | |:---|:---|:---| | Typical case | Vacation, sick leave, business trip | Employee leaves, role changes, long leave without a return date | | **End date** | Required | Optional | | How the period is shown | A date range | "from" and the start date, when there is no end date | | When it ends | After the end date | After the end date, if you set one; otherwise only when it is cancelled | If you already know the last day of the cover, you can set an end date for a handover as well. It then behaves like a temporary substitution that is labelled as a handover. --- ## Before you start - You need **Member (edit)** access to the site that holds the absence lists, and the page with the **Substitutions** web part. - The substitute needs the same access, because the substitute must open the **Substitutions** web part to confirm the handover. - Decide what exactly is handed over. A clear text in the **Responsibilities** field saves many questions later. --- ## Create the handover 1. Open the page with the **Substitutions** web part. 2. Select **Assign a substitute**. The panel **Assign a substitute** opens. 3. In **Absent person**, select the employee who is leaving. The field starts with your own name, so replace it. You can pick any person. 4. In **Substitute**, select the colleague who takes over the duties. 5. In **Kind of substitution**, select **Handover of duties**. The message "A handover of duties has no end date unless you set one." appears. 6. In **Start date**, select the first day of the handover, usually the day after the last working day of the employee. 7. Leave **End date (optional)** empty to create an open-ended handover. 8. In **Responsibilities**, describe what the substitute takes over, for example "Supplier approvals, customer inbox, shared mailbox". 9. Select **Save**. ![The Assign a substitute panel set up as a handover of duties](https://static.vitextra.com/articles/10349/assign-handover-panel-en.png) *The Assign a substitute panel set up as a handover of duties* The panel closes and the message "The substitution was created. The substitute has to confirm it." appears. If a required value is missing, the panel shows one of these messages instead: "Select the person who is absent.", "Select the substitute.", "The substitute cannot be the absent person.", "Select the start and end dates." (for a missing start date) or "The end date cannot be earlier than the start date." --- ## The substitute confirms The handover starts with the status **Waiting for confirmation**, like every substitution. The substitute opens the **I cover** tab, checks the **Responsibilities** and selects **Accept** or **Decline**. Details are in [KB10347. How to Accept or Decline a Substitution](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10347). The product does not send e-mail or Teams messages, so tell the substitute personally that a handover is waiting. 📝 **Note** A substitution created in the toolbar is not tied to any absence request. It stays independent of the requests, and it does not remove an absence from the **No substitute** tab. See [KB10350. How Absence Requests and Substitutions Work Together](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10350). --- ## How the handover looks After the confirmation, the handover is visible in three places: - On the **I cover** tab of the substitute, with the caption "You cover this person" and the text **Responsibilities**. - On the **Covering me** tab of the employee, as long as the employee can use the web part. - On the **Who covers whom** tab for everyone who works with the site, so colleagues can find the right contact. See [KB10348. How to Find Out Who Covers Whom](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10348). The period is written as "from" and the start date, the kind is **Handover of duties**, and the pill shows **Planned** before the start date and **In progress** afterwards. Without an end date the pill never changes to **Ended**. ![An open-ended handover of duties in the Who covers whom list](https://static.vitextra.com/articles/10349/handover-row-en.png) *An open-ended handover of duties in the Who covers whom list* --- ## End the handover An open-ended handover has no automatic end. It stays **In progress** until it is cancelled. **If the employee can still sign in** (role change, long leave): the employee opens the **Substitutions** web part and selects **Cancel substitution** on the row. The web part shows "The substitution was cancelled." and the row disappears from every list. **If the employee has left:** the web part allows only the absent person to cancel a substitution, and a manager cannot cancel it on behalf of the employee. In this case a site administrator opens the **Substitutions** list on the site, finds the item and changes only the column `SubstitutionStatus` to `Cancelled`. Do not change other columns. ❗ **Important** A cancelled handover cannot be restored in the web part. If the duties go to another person later, create a new handover. Cancel the old one first; otherwise **Who covers whom** shows two active substitutes for the same person. --- ## Use the data in other solutions 📝 **Note** The **Substitutions** list is a data source for Vitextra People Connector ("who covers X") and for hand-over steps of an offboarding process. A handover without an end date stays active in this data, which is why it is a convenient way to keep the answer to "who covers X?" correct after an employee leaves. The fields used are AbsentUser, Substitute, StartDate, EndDate, Kind and SubstitutionStatus.