This documentation supports the 22.1 version of BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management.To view an earlier version, select the version from the Product version menu.

Configuring approvals

This section is intended for the application administrator who configures approvals to work with Knowledge Management. Configuration tasks are performed from the Application Administration Console.

Important

You must log on to the application with Action Request System Admin permissions or General Access permissions in addition to Knowledge Config permission.

Related topics

Configuring email-based approvals(Change Management documentation)

Approval chains

An approval process is required for the following status transitions in Knowledge Management:

  • Before an article status is set to Published
  • Before an article status is set to Retired
  • Before an article is Cancelled


Important

  • A user with the Knowledge Admin permission can move articles to the Cancelled status from any other status and without activating the approval process.
  • You can configure all phases for knowledge request life cycle. However, you can set only one phase at a time.

For the Global company, Knowledge Management provides a set of predefined approval chains for each status transition that requires an approval (Published, Retired, and Cancelled).


    • Auto approval — The default approval chain configured in system installation. The system provides an automatic approval for every request.
    • Level approval— The following options are available:
      • Level All — All of the approvers from the approvers list must approve the article for each level. The article moves to the next approval level only after all the approvers have approved. If the approvers include a group, one member of the group is enough.
      • Level One — At least one approver from the approvers list must approve the article for each level. The article moves to the next approval level after one approver has approved.

    • Ad-hoc approval — Makes the article's owner the initial approver. The owner can choose to approve the article and end the approval process, or to approve the article and then define another ad-hoc approver who can make the same choice and continue the chain of approvals.

      Note

      If you enable the Ad-hoc approval chain, only the current approver receives an approval request in Approval Central. Initially, the article owner receives an approval request in Approval Central, and then each new ad-hoc approver receives an approval request when they are defined by the previous ad-hoc approver.

Based on the configured approval chains, the system determines whether an approval process is required, and whose approval is required.

Approval workflow

At the beginning of an article lifecycle, the article enters the pre-publish review process. The following workflow describes the Published approval workflow and applies to Retired and Cancelled statuses.

  • The designated approvers can view pending requests and approve or reject them in Approval Central that is available from IT Home > Quick Links.
    For more information on Approval Central, see Approval Central.
    During the approval process and before the article is set to Published, Knowledge users can withdraw articles from the approval workflow by opening the article and modifying it.
  • The approvers approve or reject the article.
  • The article status changes to Published, Retired, or Cancel depending on the request that initiated the approval process.
    If the request is rejected, the article status reverts back as follows:
    • For Publish Approval, the article reverts to Draft status.
    • For Retire Approval, the article reverts to Published status.
    • For Cancellation, the article reverts to the status it was in, before requesting for cancellation.




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