This mashup is slightly different from most of the other mashups in this book because the user interface in this mashup is minimal. The main bulk of processing is within a rake script that runs periodically.
This is the flow of the mashup:
1. The employee creates and fills up an expense claim spreadsheet in Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
2. He or she also attaches the expense evidence (i.e. expense receipts) into a word processor document in Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
3. The employee then shares these two documents with his or her manager for approval.
4. Upon receiving the shared documents, the manager will approve or reject the expense claim. Rejection is out of scope in this mashup, and in most cases verbally disputed and out of most systems.
5. If the manager approves the claim, he or she will place it into an
approved-claimsfolder.6. At regular intervals (once a week or once a moth) a rake script will be automatically run to retrieve all the claim documents in the
approved-claims...