Approvals

One desk for every decision: the requests, payment vouchers and memos waiting on you, the ones you are waiting on, and how long it all took. This installation calls it My Desk.

Where
Menu › Work › My Desk. The number beside it is how many items need your decision. Administrators also have Menu › Administration › Approval routes.
Who
Everyone can open it and follow what they sent. Heads of department, executives and the officers of offices that are steps in a route (finance, checking, audit, registry…) decide items here.
Permissions
view_approvals to open it; approve_approvals (decide items assigned to you), add_approvers, manage_approvers (reassign or remove approvers on any item), delegate_approvals (hand your step to someone else), view_approval_history (decisions across your units, not just your own), view_approval_trends (the Trends view), export_approvals, manage_approval_workflows (design routes). Deciding a request step also needs approve_requests; payments and memos need approve_payments or approve_memos. See Approvals permissions.
How-to
Approve, return or reject
My Desk of the head of the ICT unit, on Action required.
  1. Views. Each view is its own page with a count: Action required, Overdue, Critical, In progress (with others), History, and Trends for people with that access. On a phone the views scroll sideways above the list.
  2. Module filter. All modules, or only Requests, Payments or Memos.
  3. An item. Title, reference, kind and who it is from, and the amount if there is one. Select it to open it.
  4. Level and decision. Which level of the route you are and what you are asked to do, for example Level 1 of 2 · Approve or · Recommend.
  5. Due / overdue. Due in 4h while there is time; Overdue 5h in red once the deadline set by the route has passed.
  6. Current step. The level's name, for example L-1 · Head of Department.

Screens

Action required
Items waiting on your recommendation or approval. Tick several recommendations to decide them together (Recommend all or Do not recommend, with a reason).
Overdue
Steps past the date they were due, latest first. With approval-history access this covers your units as well as you. Routes without a deadline never appear.
Critical
High-value or urgent items, chains that have not moved in days, and steps far past their due date. Badges say why: High value, Urgent, Chain stalled, Very overdue. The thresholds are set in Settings.
In progress (with others)
Chains you started or have already acted on, who holds them now and when they are due: You submitted this or You approved.
History
Decisions you were part of, newest first: Item, Step, Decision, Decided by, Decided, Submitted by. Filter by module, decision (Any decision) and submitter.
Trends
Turnaround, throughput and where chains get stuck: Decisions per week, Slowest steps, Slowest approvers and Rejection rate by module, for the last 30 days, 90 days, 6 months or year.
A task
Payments and memos open on a task page with the document, the chain and your decision panel. Requests open on their own request page, which has the same decision box.
Approval routes
Administrators only: sequential or parallel chains of recommend and approve steps that payment types and memo templates use. See Approval workflows.

Decisions

What you can choose depends on the level. Every decision is recorded with your name, the time and your comment; a negative decision needs a comment.

Recommend
You support it; it moves on to the next level.
Partially recommend
You support part of it (for example a lower amount); it moves on with your comment.
Do not recommend
You do not support it. Depending on the route it stops there or continues with your objection on record.
Approve
You agree. At the last level this finalises the item.
Reject
Turned down. The item ends as rejected.
Return for correction
Sent back to the originator to fix and resubmit (requests).

Some offices use their own words for the positive and negative decisions, such as Treat / Don't Treat, Authorized / Not Authorized or Forward to CMD / Return to officer. They mean the same as approve and reject.

On a step shared by several people (for example an audit desk), the first person to act decides it for everyone.

Handing over and adding approvers

Delegate this step to
Passes your step to a colleague, with a reason (Why are you handing this over?). Needs the delegate permission.
Add Approver
Brings a colleague into the route at an Approval level, optionally with Allow delegation.

The words My Desk, Action required, In progress (with others), Level and Approval routes are this installation's terminology (Settings › Terminology). The standard words are Approvals, Needs action, Waiting on others, Step and Approval workflows.

Depends on

How do I…

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