Creating signature escalations

Use the Signature Escalations tabs to configure settings for notifications and actions when a signature line has been waiting too long without a response. For example, you can set up a notification to be sent when a request has been outstanding for two days.

Scenario:

After an employee submits his expenses in the Expense Management System, the manager is notified. The request status is set to Submitted.  

The desired approval schedule is two days. This must include only business working days and exclude weekends and holidays. If a request is submitted on a Friday, the manager is expected to approve the request by the following Monday. If Monday happens to be a holiday, the manager can approve the request by Tuesday. These calculations are based on the organization's business calendar and holiday calendar.

In addition, you can set the time past which the request will change its status automatically. In our example, the status is set to Approved. If the approval request is outstanding for more than two days, the request is auto-approved and employees will be reimbursed their expenses. 

The primary feature of signature escalations is notifying the approver about the outstanding approval. This can be implemented in the following situations:

• The interval when the submitted request is auto-approved is considerably long. For example, if the time when the request is auto-approved is 10 days, you would want to keep notifying the manager until that time.
• The changed state is set to a status between Submitted and Approved statuses. For example, if the approval request is outstanding, the status is set to pending after two days. The manager is kept notified about the pending request. 
• Auto-approval is not implemented. All approvals require express approval from the manager.

Successive notifications can be set at the frequency based on the first notification. If the first interval is set to 3 days, the manager receives the first notification on Wednesday for the request submitted on Friday last. If we set the repeat frequency to 1 day, the manager receives the second notification on day 4 (Thursday), the third on day 5 (Friday), and so on.

The notification feature can be set to include various conditions prior to approval or completion, such as:

• pending action
• error or invalid state
• process put on hold
• when requesting more information 

The following procedure applies to all the priority levels that are associated with a request: Normal, Urgent, or Low.

To enter signature escalations

1. Open the Process Definition form if it is not already open. See Creating a process.
2. On the Basic tab, select a process from the list and click View.
3. Open the tab for the appropriate priority level:
   • Signature Escalations (Normal)
   • Signature Escalations (Urgent)

   • Signature Escalations (Low)

     Note

     Enter the appropriate parameters for Normal, Urgent, or Low priority signature escalations. The settings on these tabs are applicable only to requests with the same priority. For example, if a low priority request is being processed and no values are defined on the Signature Escalations (Low) tab, no action is taken on the request.

4. Select or enter the names of the business calendar and the holiday calendar you want to use for signature escalation notifications.
   These names must match existing schedule names from the Business Time Workdays or Business Time Holidays forms. For information about configuring business times, see Defining business schedules using Business Time.
5. To change the state of an approval request automatically if no signature action occurs after a specified interval, enter the Automatic Action parameters:
   1. Enter a number in the After Interval field to indicate when you want the state changed, and select the item that this number represents from the Unit list.
      For example, if you want the state to change two days after the approval request enters a certain state, enter 2 in the After Interval field, and select Days from the Unit list.
   2. In the Change State field, use the drop-down list to select the state that you want to apply to the approval request.
      The options are Pending, Approved, or Rejected.
      If you set these parameters, approvers can see the resulting date and time after which the state of the approval request changes automatically. This is shown on AP:Show-Detail > Action Date field and Approval Central > Action Date column. For more information, see Form to view history of activities on a request for an approval process and Approval Central.
6. To send notifications when a signature line has been outstanding (in any state) for too long, specify the Notification: Still <OutstandingState> parameters. For example, If a signature line has been outstanding in Pending state for too long then specify the Notification: Still Pending parameters.
   1. Enter a number in the First Interval field to indicate when you want the first notification sent, and select the item that this number represents from the Unit list.
   2. If you want a second notification sent, enter a number in the Repeat Interval field and select the item that this number represents from the Unit list.
      This is shown on the Approval Central > Past Due requests > Action Date column. For more information, see Approval Central.
7. If you want to send notifications when the approval request remains in a certain state (Pending, Error, Hold, or More Information) too long, specify the Notification: Still <in State> parameters. For example, if a signature line has been outstanding in Hold state for too long then specify the Notification: Still Hold parameters.
   
   1. Enter a number in the First Interval field to choose the state that indicates when you want the first notification sent, and select the item that this number represents from the Unit list.
   2. If you want a second notification sent, enter a number in the appropriate Repeat Interval field and select the item that this number represents from the Unit list.