Case approvals

In BMC Helix Business Workflows, certain cases might need approvals from the concerned manager, business group, and so on, before the case agents can proceed with the cases. Approvals can be required at different stages of the case lifecycle. An approval is an end-to-end process that starts when a case is sent for approval and ends with an approval outcome.

A case business analyst configures self-approvals, approval flows, or a chain of approvals. The case business analyst can then apply the approval process to case templates. An approval process is triggered for the cases that are created with the associated case templates. The case business analyst can configure to trigger the approval process even for cases that do not use templates.

An approval configuration ensures that:

Administrators define the business logic for approvals quickly.
Approving authorities review the pending requests for approval, and approve or reject them, as required.

Case approval flow

The following figure illustrates how an approval is processed end-to-end.

After an administrator configures an approval, when the status of a case triggers an approval, the system checks the approval mappings. If an approval is mapped, the system checks the following points:

When the status of a case changes to a status that triggers an approval, the system checks if the case belongs to an approval mapping.
The system checks if a self-approval is defined for the case. If a self-approval is defined, the self-approval is triggered for the case.
Based on the approval outcome, the case status is changed. If an approval is not applied to the case, the case exits the approval process.
If a self-approval isn't found, the system checks for an expression in approval flows.
If an approval flow is defined that matches the case information, the approval is run for the case based on the approval flow configuration. Based on the approval outcome, the case status changes.
If no self-approval or approval flow is defined for the case, the case exits the approval process and the case status is changed based on an approval mapping.
Learn more about approval mapping in Mapping case status to approvals.

Example

An employee requests for a monetary award for a colleague, and the following events take place:

A case agent creates a case for the employee by using a case template that is associated with an approval mapping.
The case matches the corresponding approval flow qualification and goes through the approval process.
Because it is a monetary award, the request goes to the manager of the employee for approval.
Because the monetary award is large, the request is sent to the second-level manager for approval. next the manager of the manager approves the case.

What is a status trigger

A status trigger defined in an approval mapping starts the approval process. The following points explain a status trigger and an expression in detail, and their flow:

Status trigger—In an approval mapping, a case business analyst defines a case status that triggers an approval for a case. The case business analyst also defines the status to which the case transitions, based on an approval outcome—case is approved, rejected, canceled, errored out, or no approval is found for the case.
When an approval is triggered, the following events take place:
- Status of the case changes to Pending.
- Value of the Status Reason field is Approval.
- Case assignee is notified about the status change.
When a case is approved, the case transitions to the next status specified in the approval mapping. When a case is rejected, the case transitions to the previous status specified in the approval mapping. For information about approval mappings, see Mapping case status to approvals.
Expression—An expression evaluates for which case an approval should be run. The case evaluation is initiated only after an approval is triggered.
For example, a case agent creates case A and case B. Approval is triggered, case A matches with expression A, and case B matches with expression B. Then, approvals for which the expressions are defined are executed for the respective cases.

Case approvers

An approver can be an employee, a company (business unit or support group), a vendor, and so on. An administrator can specify an approver, multiple approvers, or percentage of approvers to approve a case. For more information about specifying approvers, see Configuring approval flows Open link .

An approver can review the cases that are pending for approval in the following ways:

Approval Console—Use the Approval console to approve or reject cases. In the Approval console, the approver can view the case fields for additional information about a case.
For more information about different approval statuses and updating an approval request by using the Approval console, see Viewing and responding to approval requests .
BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced client application—Use the BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced client application to approve or reject cases.
For more information about different approval statuses and updating an approval request by using the BMC Helix Digital Workplace Advanced client application, see Approving business requests .

Case approval notifications

An administrator can also create notifications that are related to approvals. The administrator can create notifications to notify individuals such as an approver, an agent, a requester, and so on about certain events. For example, an administrator creates a notification Case pending for approval that notifies an approver about a case that requires approval.

For more information about how to configure approval notifications, see Defining approval notifications.