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Approvals Overview

An approval is a request for one named person, or anyone in a group or team, to say yes or no before a process carries on. Approvals come from workflow Approval steps, from approval matrices on ERP documents, and from controlled documents, and they are all decided in the same places under the same rules.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Automation:

  • Approvals Inbox — everything waiting for your decision
  • Approval Matrices — who approves which ERP documents, at what value and in what order
  • Approval Requests (data) — the raw request records, for looking up and auditing only
  • Delegations — who is covering for whom, and until when

Admin Panel → Processes:

  • Approvals Inbox — the same inbox for back-office users

Admin Panel → ERP - Setup:

  • Approval Matrices — the matrices console for ERP administrators

Where approvals come from

  • A workflow's Approval step: the run parks until the approver decides, then goes down Approved or Rejected. See Message and People Steps.
  • An approval matrix: when an ERP document asks for a status that a matrix governs (a requisition asking to be Approved, say), the matrix opens a request for each approver of each stage in turn. See Approval Matrices.
  • ERP documents with no matrix: a document waiting for a move that a permission allows is listed for the people holding that permission. See Transactional Documents.
  • Document control: approvals of controlled documents. See Document Control.

Where people decide

  • The Approvals Inbox, for anyone with back-office access. See The Approvals Inbox.
  • The "Waiting for my approval" page, for everyone else, opened from the link an Approval step can e-mail.
  • The record's Processes pane, under Waiting for a decision.
  • The in-tray (Worklist): each request also puts an item in the approver's in-tray, including requests routed to their group or team.

The rules every decision follows

  1. Only the named approver may decide. Administrative access is not a way round it: an approval someone else could sign for you is not an approval. The exception is a declared delegation on a matrix stage that allows it; see Approvers, Groups and Delegation.
  2. The approver must be able to read the record. A request on a record they cannot open cannot be decided; the inbox says so and suggests asking an administrator for Read access.
  3. Rejecting needs a reason. The person who asked reads it first. Approving takes an optional comment.
  4. A decision cannot be taken back from the inbox. The process carries on straight away.
  5. A rejection with no rejection route drawn in the workflow ends the run.

Withdrawn, not decided

Sometimes a request stops applying. It is then withdrawn: closed with a reason, and nobody's decision is recorded.

  • The workflow run is cancelled, or the workflow is deleted.
  • A new version removed the step that asked: trying to decide says the request no longer applies.
  • An ERP document is cancelled, closed or rejected while its matrix approval is open.

Approval Requests (data)

This tile opens the raw request records for looking up and auditing. Do not decide approvals there: changing a request's state in the grid records nothing about who decided and does not move the workflow on. Use the Approvals Inbox.

Not the same as approving new accounts

The Approve, Revoke, Decline and Change to Approved buttons on external (single sign-on) accounts belong to new-user approval, not to processes. They appear only when the hosting administrator has switched external-user approval on for the installation. See External Accounts.

Worked example

A charity routes grant payments through a workflow Approval step naming group:Trustees, and purchase requisitions through an approval matrix. A trustee opens the Approvals Inbox and sees both kinds side by side: the grant labelled Workflow and the requisition labelled Approval matrix. They approve the grant with a comment and reject the requisition with the reason "No budget code"; the grant workflow carries on to payment and the requisition moves to Rejected.

Recommendations

  • Decide in the inbox, never by editing Approval Requests (data).
  • Name approvers precisely, by e-mail address, group or team.
  • Write rejection reasons the requester can act on.
  • Draw a rejection route on every Approval step.