Context

In many organizations, the business travel request process is still manual and fragmented. Employees submit travel plans through emails, spreadsheets, or offline forms — leading to slow approvals, lack of visibility, and frequent miscommunication between employees, managers, and finance teams. Traditional travel management often lacks conversational clarity and real-time updates, leaving employees uncertain about policies and request status.

Solution

TravelMate is a low-code, conversational travel request assistant built using Microsoft Copilot Studio, Power Automate, Dataverse, and Outlook. It empowers employees to: submit travel requests through an easy, chat-based interface, track the status of submitted trips anytime, ask questions about company travel policies using structured Dataverse data and an integrated PDF FAQ as a generative knowledge source. TravelMate stores each request in a Dataverse table, including destination, dates, purpose, estimated cost, and status. Submitted requests instantly trigger a Power Automate flow that notifies the appropriate manager through Outlook, ensuring fast, accountable approvals. The agent automatically recognizes the user’s role — Employee or Manager — and adapts flows accordingly. Managers can view, approve, reject, and comment on requests directly inside the same chat, eliminating back-and-forth emails.

Impact

TravelMate transforms how organizations handle business travel by delivering a secure, modern, conversational experience. It removes the need for manual email chains, reduces approval delays, and centralizes all travel data in a single source of truth. Employees gain transparency and self-service control, while managers benefit from clear, structured workflows — all built entirely on Microsoft’s trusted low-code platform. The result: faster approvals, improved policy compliance, and a smoother travel management experience — without custom tools or outdated paper trails.