Denial Step

• Create Custom Steps
• Tips for Using Denial Steps
  • Notifications of Denied Proposals
  • Do Nothing - Continue Workflow
  • Do Nothing - Stop Workflow

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. A denial step can be created part of an Approval Step to determine what happens if an approver selects 'Deny' instead of 'Approve'.

Note: The option to Deny may not be available on a step, if it has been disabled at either the individual step or within the Workflow Settings for the app. 

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.

Note: Please note, if a document gets denied at a stop and you have 'Stop the Workflow' configured the document status will go to 'Denied'. Also, if the stop is the final or only stop in the workflow and it gets denied is will go to status of 'Denied'. Lastly, if you have it configured to 'Continue the Workflow' and the stop gets denied but there are future workflow stops then it will take the status of the last action (i.e. Approved or Denied). 

Create Custom Steps

Once the Approval step has been created, and the option for Custom Steps has been selected, you can add additional custom steps that will take place after the approver chooses the denial option. While there are several use cases for this, the following will cover just one example.

Imagine there is a form for students to submit where they can request to make changes to their major. The first approver within the workflow may be the student's advisor, and the second approver is the department chair of the program the student is requesting to join. 

Although the student's advisor may choose to deny the request, you may wish to allow the the department chair to provide additional information, such as inputting their own recommendation. This would potentially allow a department chair to allow the change, even if the advisor denied it, in the case the department chair should have the final say.  

• Frist, create the approval step for the student's advisor.
• In the Denial step options, select Custom steps (add them in the denial section).
  • In the second option, under Then, indicate what should happen after the custom step. Should the workflow stop, or continue? In this example, the option for Continue Workflow was selected - meaning that even if the Department Chair approves on this step, the proposal would continue on in the workflow, even though the Advisor denied it.
• Once you have selected the denial step option, you'll see the step in the visual workflow update to provide a space for the additional denial steps.

• This approval step will be sent to the Advisor. To add an additional step for the Department Chair, an approval step will need to be placed into the box below the text "If denied"
• Select Approval from the top left side of the Workflow screen, and drag and drop the step in the light gray box under If Denied.

• Complete the fields for the new approval step, so that it will route to the Department Chair. 

• If the proposal were denied again at this step, it would stop entirely in the workflow. The submitter is not notified by default - but you may want to include a notification step to let them know that it has been denied. Following a similar path, drag a Notification step into the denial path, right after the Department Chair approval.
  
  

This provides a workflow that will:

• Send an approval request to the student's advisor
  • If the request is approved, it will proceed to the next step in the workflow.
  • If the request is denied, an approval request will be sent to the Department Chair.
• Once the request is sent to the Department Chair, they can choose to approve or deny the request. 
  • If they approve it, the request will return to the workflow and proceed to the next step. 
  • If the request is denied, a notification will be sent to be submitter and the proposal will stop progress.

You can use the Workflow Simulator to test the workflow and preview how it will behave.

Tips for Using Denial Steps

Send Notifications of Denied Proposals

Choose Custom Steps and Stop the Workflow if no other approval-type actions should occur, but you would like to send a notification of the form rejection to the submitter. In the example below, once the department chair denies the request, the submitter will receive the Denial Notification, and the workflow will stop.

   

Do Nothing and Continue the Workflow

Choose Do Nothing and Continue to the Workflow if the remainder of the workflow should continue regardless of the denial. In the example below, if the Department Chair denies the request, the rest of the workflow will continue, and the student will receive the Approval Notification. This type of workflow may be used if there are other steps in the workflow where the decision on this step needs to be taken into account, but not necessarily be the reason for rejecting the proposal.

Do Nothing and Stop the Workflow

Choose Do Nothing and Stop the Workflow if no action should be taken and the workflow stopped. In this example no additional steps will be taken, and a notification will not be sent.