Configuring Approval Tasks and Flows within Project Templates

Approval Rules allow template administrators to assign approvers to Approval Tasks based on certain factors.

These approval rules can be Simple Approval flows, requiring placing a user into the Approver/Reviewer field when setting up a Review or Approval task.

They can be made more complicated by using the Approval Rule Editor to combine serial and parallel approval flows, conditions, references to conditions, approval look-up tables, and more.

By adding conditions, you can use one approval/review task to capture multiple approvals when needed. For example, depending on the Contract Amount, you might have a Contract Workspace that requires approval from different business areas. If the Contract Amount is over $500,000.00, you need to get approval from a Vice President. You can set a condition to add an approval node to the approval task when the Contract Amount is over $500,000.00. If the Contract Amount is less, then the VP approval isn’t needed and is not added to the task's approval flow; instead, Finance is added to the approval flow.

Simple Approval flows are helpful when there is not a lot of logic that needs to be built into the approval. For example, you have an approver that needs to be added to a project for all projects. In this case, you could select the reviewer/approver who needs to approve and submit the task. You could also create a simple serial flow by using the Approver/Reviewer field when setting up the task and selecting Serial as the Approval Rule Flow Type. When you are selecting multiple reviewers for a serial approval and using the simple approval flow by populating the Reviewer/Approver field, be sure to add the approvers in order from last to first so that the last reviewer you specify will be the first person to review/approve in the flow.

The Approval Flow Types can be set to one of the following:

• Serial approval flows consist of a series of approvers that must approve one at a time.
• Parallel approval flow approvers can approve the task simultaneously.
• Custom approval flows include serial and parallel approval node styles.

Advanced Approval Rules will allow you to use the Approval Rule Editor and the Approval Process Diagram to create more advanced approval rules that might help to address some of the more complicated parts of your business process.

• The Approval Process Diagram is a graphical representation of the approval rules you will build.
  • The boxes represent approval nodes within the approval flow.
  • You can choose the arrows to add serial and parallel approvers.
  • The X icon will delete a node.
  • Select a node to view the Approval Rule Editor.
  
• The Approval Rule Editor is where the setup of the rules is displayed and edited.
  • Rule Title specifies the title.
  • Rule Description provides a description of what the rule is meant to do.
  • Conditionspecifies if there are dependencies for an approval rule before it can be triggered, primarily based on field values.
  • Actionspecifies what the system will do for this node by either adding approvers and groups or using an Approver Lookup Table.
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• Rules configured in tasks to automatically assign approvers/reviewers based on certain conditions.
• Use the Approval Rule Editor within a task to create or edit custom approval rules that can include both parallel and serial approver flows.
• Advanced Approval rules can contain a combination of both parallel and serial approvers.
• Simple Approval Rules can be set at the task level, instead of the Approval Rule Editor.
• Create conditions for approvers or approval lookup tables.

1. Open your project workspace template and ensure that it is in Draft status
2. Select a document and choose Create new approval/review/negotiation task.
3. Select parallel or serial for the Approval Rule Flow type field.
4. Select a reviewer or approver from the drop-down menu, last to first.

1. Open your project workspace template and ensure that it is in Draft status
2. Select a document and choose Create new approval/review/negotiation task.
3. Select Custom for the type, and choose the flow chart icon to access the Approval Rule Editor.
4. Choose Add Initial Approver in the Process Diagram.
5. Enter a Rule Title and provide an optional description.
6. Add any conditions using a reference to an existing condition.
7. Select Add Approvers and Groups in the Action area if not using an Approver Lookup Table.
8. Select the action settings from the drop-down menu options: add group, project group, supervisor, etc.
9. Choose whether all users need to approve, and if it is required within the Parameters section.
10. Specify the group or user that will be added to the flow and optionally provide a reason.
11. Choose Done to finish configuration of this node.