An approval step requires a user or group of users to review and take the "Approve" action within a document. The workflow cannot continue until the step is approved. Typically, approval steps are utilized to capture the necessary review/approval from the required users, departments, colleges, or other groups/units for the given functional purpose of the app.
Within an Approval step, you will need to define which users will be involved on the step, whether they can edit it, what their options are, and what happens if it is denied.
Click on the approval step in the workflow you wish to edit, and the flyout will appear to the right allowing you to modify the settings for the step.
Approval Step Options
Step Label
Each step in the workflow can have a custom label applied do it. These labels help to identify the steps, both in the workflow and when reviewing them on the proposal.
For example, the default step name for an approval step is 'Approval' - but if every step were titled as 'Approval', it would be difficult to troubleshoot or identify where in the process it is.
The Step Label allows you to customize the name of a step so it more accurately represents this part of the process. This will help you keep your workflow organized as you are building out your process, and help provide clarity for reviewers who need to approve multiple times during the process.
The Step Label also appears in the Approval Notification that is emailed to the reviewer to help them identify where they are in the workflow process.
To change the Step Label, click into the step to open the configuration panel, then click into the Step Label field. Once you have updated the Step Label, it will save automatically and the step in the workflow will update to match.
Who will ____ at this step?
Once you have created a step (approval, task, acknowledge, or notification), the step options panel will open on the right-hand side of the screen. From there, you can choose from a list of individuals to participate at this step within the workflow. Each option is discussed below.
Person(s) in a role of a group, or the group's hierarchy, on the form
This option is available on the approval, task, acknowledge, and notification steps, and will allow you to choose a person in a specific role from any group that was mentioned on your form.
Once this option is selected, an additional field will load below that will ask you to specify the field on the form that lists the group.
You will then be prompted to select the role from that particular group that will participate at this step within the workflow. Based on the number of users within a role, this could potentially refer to a single person or several (such as a committee).
Person(s) in a role of any specific group
This option is available on the approval, task, acknowledge, and notification steps, and will allow you to choose a person in a specific role from any of the groups that have been established.
Once this option is selected, an additional field will load below that will ask you to specify the role and the group. The roles will be listed with the group first, followed by the role. For example, "Accountancy - Administrators". This setting ensures that any user within the Administrator role of the Accountancy group will be brought into the workflow at this step, regardless of any selections on the form.
A person specified on the form
This option is available on the approval, task, acknowledge, and notification steps, and will allow you to choose a person listed in a field on the form.
Once this option is selected, an additional field will load below that will ask you to specify the field on the form where that person is listed. Additionally, you can select the submitter of the form by choosing "Submitter (meta.submittedBy)" from the drop down.
An email specified on the form
This option is only available on the notification step, and will allow you to choose an email field on the form and create a customized notification email to send to that user.
Any specific person
This option is available on the approval, task, acknowledge, and notification steps, and will allow you to choose any person from any of the groups that have been established within your system, regardless of any selections made on the form. Once this option is selected you will be asked to specify the user. When a document is submitted into the workflow, the user listed on this step will always be selected, and it will not change unless you update the step.
Any specific email
This option is only available on the notification step, and will allow you to send a workflow notification to a specific email address without needing to reference it in the form. Once selected, you will be need to enter the specific email.
Denial Step
A denial step can be used when an approver decides the proposal should not progress past the current step in the workflow. What happens after the proposal is denied can vary, based on the settings provided for the step. One great use case for a denial step is to send a notification to the submitter: a notification is not automatically sent to the submitter if their request has not been approved. If you would like a user to be notified of the denial, you must create a notification step to occur after it has been denied.
A denial step can only be created as part of an approval step, and there are two options available for how a step will behave if it is denied:
- Custom steps (add them in the denial section)
Selecting custom steps will allow you to provide additional steps in the workflow in the event a proposal has been denied. For example, your institution may have a process that requires escalation to a department head to review denied proposals, and may choose to approve it and continue it in the workflow even though the previous approver denied it.
- Do nothing
As described, nothing will occur.
After the 'what happens' has been defined, you can determine the next step under the 'Then' section:
- Stop the workflow
Stops the workflow, and no further steps will occur.
- Continue the workflow
Allows the workflow to resume after the denial was received.
Advanced Group Response Options
At times, you may need multiple individuals to approve a form on a given workflow step. By default, a response from one person is sufficient on an approval step, and once provided, the workflow will move onto the next step.
Enabling the Advanced Group Response Options setting will allow you to determine what percentage of the participants need to respond before the workflow process can advance. You are also able to determine what percentage of those responses must be approvals.
- The first option determines the percentage of users on the step who must provide a decision.
- If 100% is selected, then every single user on the step (whether it is 2 or 50) will be required to provide a decision on the step before it will advance in the workflow.
- The second option indicates what percentage of users on the step must select Approve.
- If 100% is selected, then all users must reach a unanimous decision in order for it to be approved; otherwise it will be denied.
Customize Email Notification
The Customize Email Notification setting enables you to include a custom message in the notification that is sent to the assigned approvers.
- Email Subject
Allows you to customize the subject line of the approval notification email that will be sent to the approvers. The subject can be customized with variables for additional personalization.
- Email Body
Allows you to add a custom message to the approval email. The message can be customized with variables to further tailor it.
- Add Variable
Allows you to populate and personalize the subject line with information from the form. For example, the subject line alerts the approver that they are approving the travel request of a specific individual. “Submitter - Display Name” in the subject line will be replaced with the form submitter’s name in the approval email.
Make Individual Form Sections at this Step Hidden or View Only
This setting provides the ability to to set entire sections of the form to be hidden, or set to view only. This can be helpful when you have sensitive information that not all users need to be able to view - and it can be set on a per-section-per-step setting.
Once it has been enabled, all sections within the form will be shown along with options for Hide, View, or Edit.
- Hide
When selected, all fields within the section will be hidden at this step in the workflow. The user will be unable to see or edit anything within this section.
- View
When selected, the section and fields within will be visible to the users on this step, but they will not be able to modify any of the contents.
- Edit
When selected, the section and fields within will be visible, and the user will be able to edit the contents at this step.
Send Reminder Email Notifications
You can configure a step to automatically send a reminder email. This will send out automated reminders to users on an Approval or Task step to remind them that they need to take action. You can edit the frequency to send either a single reminder after a specified number of days has passed, or to a reminder based on the number of days. For example, you could send a reminder to be sent every two days until the user completes the requested action.
In addition to adjusting this at the step level, you can set reminders for the entire workflow within the Workflow Settings.
Disable Ability to Deny
By default, every workflow step has the 'Deny' option that will allow users to deny (or disapprove) the document. However, if you don't want users to have this option in the workflow, you can toggle this option on to disallow the denial option for a particular step. When this is enabled, users will not see 'Deny' as an option in the document when it's in their Action List.
Keep in mind when making updates to this setting that it will only impact documents submitted to the workflow after the setting has been changed and the workflow is published.
In addition to adjusting this at the step level, you can disable the denial option for the entire workflow within the Workflow Settings.
Disable Ability to Send Back
By default, every workflow step has the option to send back a document to a previous step in the workflow. However, if you don't want users to have this option in the workflow, you can toggle this option on to disallow the send back as an option for a particular step. When this is enabled, users will not see the 'send back' as an option in the document when it's in their Action List.
Keep in mind when making updates to this setting that it will only impact documents submitted to the workflow after the setting has been changed and the workflow is published.
In addition to adjusting this at the step level, you can disable the send back for the entire workflow within the Workflow Settings.
Disable Workflow Status Page
By default, every user in the workflow will see the workflow details - including prior/future workflow steps and any comments added. However, if you don't want reviewers to see the workflow details, you can change this setting on an individual step.
Keep in mind when making updates to this setting that it will only impact documents submitted to the workflow after the setting has been changed and the workflow is published.
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