Setting up the approval process

An approval process is a set of rules and procedures that enforce processes and workflows for appropriate people to review, approve, and reject requests. An approval process must adhere to the following criteria:

  • A process must have rules to make sure all required approvals occur, no erroneous approvals occur, and sufficient authority is present to enable approval.
  • A process must have procedures to route an approved request to the next approver, stop routing a rejected request, and notify a person when a response is required.
  • Every approval requires a process to obtain appropriate signatures. Business processes often require the signatures of several people in one or more operational groups. Business processes also need to allow for alternate approvers to cover days when the regular approvers are unavailable.
  • A request might require one simple approval process or several processes that work with each other. Often the appearance of a single operation involves multiple approvals. Some requests must follow a process, but can be approved automatically based on certain criteria. 

Related topics

Defining-an-approval-process

Defining-approval-rules

In the Approval Server, an approval process is a set of rules and forms that generate data to authorize a specific AR System server workflow. An approval process consists of definitions for the operation itself, rules that define what happens at each specific stage in the process, and a place to store signatures. While process administrators need to understand these rules, they are transparent to approvers. The types of rules and how they interact are described in Approval-rules. 

The data generated by an approval process, such as the type of approval, approver signatures, requests for more information, and timestamps for audit trails, is stored in the detail record and other supporting forms. You can use this data to track the approval process for auditing or troubleshooting purposes.

The following table lists the actions you need to perform to set up an approval process:

Action

Reference

Learn about different roles involved in an approval process.

Learn about approval processes.

Learn about approval rules.

Define an approval process.

Define an approval rule.

Use the Lunch Scheduler sample application.

Work with the Approval Server forms.

Set the length of the approval fields

 

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