Approving or rejecting requests

When you finish planning the request, and have supplied all the information that the approvers require to review the request, you can submit the request for approval.

When a request requires an approval, its approvers are notified. Notifications are sent according to the method specified in the Notifications tab of the approver's record in the People form. Approvers receive an email with details of the request and approve and reject options if email based approvals are enabled. For more information on email based approvals, see Approving or rejecting requests via email.

On the request, the word Approval is displayed on the Process Status Flow area. The request must approved, canceled, or rejected from the Approval table on the change request or the Approval Server for it to move to the next defined status.

• If the request is approved—An approval signature is generated and the request moves to the next valid status or the status defined in the Approved field of the Approval Process Mapping.
• If the request is rejected—It moves to the status defined in the Rejected field of the Approval Process Configuration. You can resume or cancel a rejected request. When the change request is rejected, all the approved and pending approval signatures are closed. If the reason for rejecting the request can be resolved, the Change Manager, Change Coordinator, or Release Coordinator can take the necessary action and resume the request. If the request is resumed, all the approval signatures are automatically generated and the approved signatures stay as approved. The tasks associated to the change request are not affected when a change is rejected; these tasks can also be resumed. The request can also be canceled. A canceled request can be reopened and moved to Draft. You can submit this reopened request or reject it. For more information on resubmitting rejected change requests, see Resubmitting a rejected request.

For a change request, the request moves to the Pending status with a status reason as Approval Error when:

• A technical error occurs when the request is sent for an approval.
• An ad hoc change is defined, and the Change Manager for the Change Requester in not defined.
• Approval is mapped to a Group and no valid approver is found within the Group.
• Change Approval Chain has been configured and an approver cannot be found.

The change user can restart the change so that it can be sent for approval again.