Configuring approvals

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

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.

    Important

    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 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.

Changing the initial approver for ad-hoc approvals

You can use the AR System - Approval Server Process Definition form to change the initial owner for the Ad-hoc approval chain. 

To change the initial approver for ad-hoc approvals

Perform the following steps:

1. In the flyout menu, select Quick Links > Approval Administration Console.
2. On Process tab of the the AR System - Approval Server Administration form, select the RKM_Adhoc process, or your custom ad-hoc process if you created one, and click View.

3. On the AR System - Approval Server Process Definition form, use the menu of the First Approver Field to select a knowledge article field that contains the name of a user. 
   
   For example, select the Submitter field from the menu to make the person who submitted the knowledge article as initial approver. The First Approver Field will then display $Submitter$ as its value.

   Important

   By default, the First Approver Field for the RKM_Adhoc process displays $ArticleOwnerLoginID$ as its value.

4. Click Save.

Configuring approval chains

For every status transition, define one of the four predefined approval chains. You can also configure the predefined approval chains for other companies by creating new approval chains.

To configure approval chains for a global company

Perform the following steps:

1. On the IT Home page, select Application Admin Console > Custom Configuration tab > Knowledge Management > Knowledge Management Approvals Configuration > Approval Chains.
2. For every status transition (Publish, Retire, and Cancel), enable the approval chain that you want:
   1. Select an approval chain from the list and click Modify to open the Approval Chain Definition page.
      For example, if you want to enable Level one approval for Publish, select the LevelOneForPublish approval chain.
   2. To enable the approval chain, select Enabled in the Status list.
      Only one chain can be enabled for each status. Disable a chain that you do not use.

To create new approval chains for a company

Perform the following steps to create new approval chain for a specific company:

1. From the IT Home page, choose Application Admin Console > Custom Configuration tab > Knowledge Management > Knowledge Management Approvals Configuration > Approval Chains.
2. Click Create to open the Approval Chain Definition page.
3. Enter the approval chain name and select the company that you want.
4. Configure the approval chain properties.
   1. In the Form field, select RKM:KnowledgeArticleManager.
   2. In the Order field, enter a value less than 20.
   3. In the Process Name field, select one of the predefined approval processes.

   4. In the Selection Criteria field, click the expand box icon to open the Advanced Qualification Builder and define the run if condition, which triggers the selected process, to use the selected company:

      'ArticleStatusEnglish'="Publish Approval" AND 'Company' = "[company name]"

      Tip

      You can copy the selection criteria string from the predefined processes configured for the Global company.

   5. Click Select to save and close the Advanced Qualification Builder .
5. Click Apply to add the process to the new approval chain.
6. Define an action for all the possible results of the process Approved, Rejected, Cancelled, and Error.
   1. Select a status in the approval chain tree (for example, Approved).
   2. Click the Add Set Fields Action panel header (on the right side), and click Apply.
   3. Select the new Set Field in the approval chain tree, and click Add.
   4. In the Set Field Value dialog box, set fields and values as defined in process provided out of the box.
   5. In the Value field, enter the value that you want to set in the field.
   6. Click Save.
7. Click Save to save the approval chain.

Configuring approval mappings

Approvers are people with the authority to approve or reject a request. These users are usually members of a Support Group, and are assigned the Knowledge Management Approver role. The approval process automatically routes approval requests to the people you define based on their level in the process.

To create approver mappings

Perform the following steps:

1. From the IT Home page, choose Application Admin Console > Custom Configuration tab > Knowledge Management > Knowledge Management Approvals Configuration > Approval Mappings.
2. Enter the required information in the following fields and then click Save.