Approvals

An Approval is a gateway in a workflow where the responses provided in the form thus far can be reviewed and altered before progressing. Approvals may require multiple stakeholders such as members of a group or a specific user. For example:

• Two (2) members of the ‘Executive’ Group or the ‘CEO, John Smith’
• Two (2) members of the ‘HR’ group and 1 member of the ‘Finance’ group

If appropriate communication templates have been configured, Approvals automatically send email notifications when new requests are submitted, comments are provided etc.
Approvals are managed centrally and can be reused across multiple workflows.

Creating an Approval

Approvals are created and managed centrally in Manage.

1. In Manage, navigate to the Approvals section and select New Approval. These will be added to specific workflows in the steps that follow.
2. Specify an appropriate name. For example, Line Manager Approval or Executive Approval.
3. Add a clause to your workflow, by first selecting if the clause is intended for a group or user:

• For group clauses, you will need to specify which group to assign to together with how many members of that group need to approve to satisfy the clause.
• User clauses require a reference name that will later be mapped to data in the form. For example, a ‘supervisor’ clause might be mapped to a data question that is configured to retrieve the requester’s supervisor from the HR System.

4. Click Add.

5. Add more clauses as necessary. See the “All Of, Any Of and Then Clauses“ section below for how to manage approvals with multiple clauses.

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Note: If you are editing an existing approval, click the Update button before saving.

6. (Optional) See the Notifications section below to specify appropriate notifications for new requests, comments etc.
7. Click the Save button to save changes.

All Of, Any Of and Then Clauses

For Approvals with multiple clauses, All Of, Any of and Then clauses determine how the individual clauses relate. There are three clause group types:

• All Of – All clauses within the group have to be met in any order. In the example below, the Finance and Human Resource groups have to approve. Who approves first is not important as long as both approve.

• Any Of – Any Of groups need only one individual clause to be met. In the example below, the first member of Finance or Human Resources to approve will progress the entire approval.

• Then – Sub clauses need to be met in order. Members of the later sub clauses will not be able to approve before preceding sub clauses are met. Useful for situations where layers of approvals should occur. For example, do not bother the CEO until branch feedback/approvals have been actioned. In the example below, the Field Worker clause has to be met before the Approval can proceed to Finance. Finance will not be notified of the approval until the “Field Worker” clause has been met.

You can also change the following:

• Convert state by selecting the state you want to change and click the Convert state button to change from All Of to Any Of or vice versa.
• Change order of priority by selecting the clause and then clicking the up and down arrows to move a clause up or down.

Nesting Then, All Of and Any Of Groups

In the example below, All Of and Any Of are nested within Then. SmartIQ will process the clauses sequentially, starting with number 1 and will only proceed to the next clause if the previous clause has been satisfied. The last Approver would be number 4, or an Executive.

The second example is where Any Of is nested within All Of, which is then nested within Then. All of number 1 has to be satisfied before it proceeds to number 2.

Notifications

Specify communication templates as notifications when the following events occur:

• Submission – The Requester receives the notification after submitting or starting a form
• Comment – Only the Requester receives a notification if someone commented on the form
• Comment Reply – The Requester as well as other active users will receive the notification if someone replied to the comment on the form
• Approval – Only the Requester receives a notification if the form has been approved
• Rejection – Only the Requester receives a notification if the form has been rejected

For more information on Communication Templates, read this.

After setting up the Approvals, the following buttons will also appear:

• Version History button to check any changes that have been made and by whom. There is also a Restore link that will appear next to a version if there are more than two changes that have been made. Restoring discards any changes that have been made after that date.
• Related Projects to see any projects that use this Approval. These are projects that will be affected if you make changes to this Approval.

Add an Approval to a Workflow

Approvals are a state within a workflow. They enter the state when a request is made and leave once the approval clauses are met, either to go to finish or another state.
A single approval can contain many approvals where transition conditions are used to determine which path is required.

This sample workflow uses two (2) approvals, New Hire - Simple and New Hire - Executive. The transition condition states that:

• If the answer to the new hire question of executive is NO, the workflow uses the New Hire - Simple approval state and the hiring process will only need the approval of HR.
• If the answer to the new hire question of executive is YES, the workflow uses the New Hire - Executive approval state and would need the approval of a Senior Executive before it can be processed.

Adding an Approval State to a Workflow

1. 1. Open an appropriate project and navigate to its workflow. Drag and drop the Approval state into the workflow. A popup window will appear and you can select from the drop-down list of available approvals.
2. Select the workflow from the drop down list.

3. Configure the State - Approval properties:

a. (Optional) Specify the name of the state.
b. Select a View type.

• Form – The form is displayed using pages and the Approver will have to use the next and back buttons to view the request.
• Summary – Shows all the fields on one page using a form summary view. Useful for small-medium sized forms, where the request can be displayed without too much scrolling. The following minor configurations are available for summary view:

• **Collapsible pages** –  Group pages in an accordion style tab group
  

• **Include All Multiple Choice Answers** – Displays all the answers and highlights the selected answer.
  

4. If a User had been selected as an Approver in Manage, map the reference input to data in the form:

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Approval Input

This section will only display if Approvals > Clause Builder type in Manage has been set to User.

a. Select the input from the drop-down. In the example below, the User is the Supervisor.
b. Select the type of input and specify the value in the Text Value field.
c. Click Add. Repeat if there is more than one input.

5. Validate then Save project.

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Note: For both Form and Summary, only the requester will be able to make changes to the fields, but the Approver can add comments to let the requester know what changes need to be made.

In Produce

When a request is submitted to an approval state, Approvers will be able to access the approval’s content from SmartIQ home, a dashboard or from a direct link received in an email. The Approver will see the request together with some notes containing instructions/status of the approval.

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Interface Availability

Available in web interface Produce only.

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Note: It is possible that the clauses might already be met and the Approver’s contribution is no longer required. But while an approval is still active, an individual Approver can add an extra approval or reject the request.

Approvers can also use the comments icon to pass feedback to the requester. Notifications are sent as per the configuration of the Approval in Manage.

The Approver can use the following buttons in the workflow:

• Approve – Approves the form. If the current user is the last Approver required, the form will move to the next state.
• Reject – Stops the form from proceeding any further.
• Save and Close – Saves changes and comments without progressing the approval.