Approval Actions

Overview

'Approval' Actions enable an approval request flow to be added into the Case.

Often within the Case flows of business processes which are built in Enate there are points where external people (i.e. people working outside Enate - this could be business managers within your company or the relevant client company) need to sign off on activities before the process can continue. Payroll processes are good examples of such processes, where client management need to sign off on payroll reports before the process can be allowed to continue.

Enate's Approval Action is built to specifically support these scenarios in a more integrated way - to ensure that this 'approval cycle' is tightly managed and visible within the flow of activities in Enate. When an Enate Case reaches an Approval Action in a flow, things then work as follows:

• Enate uses uploaded business rules to determine the Approvers to whom approval request emails should be sent (standard email templates are available, but these can be modified to contain information sufficient for approver to review what is being requested). See dedicated section describing how your approver business rules can be uploaded into Builder.

• Once the approvers are determined, Enate sends out Approval Requests and then Waits for their response. Depending on the type of approval defined, this might send out one request after another (awaiting approval from the first) in a multilevel request, or might send the request to a group of people in one go, waiting for either one or all to approve before continuing. Note: While this is happening, the Approval Action in Work Manager sits in a state of 'Wait for more Information'

• Those approvers can then approve or decline, via a link in the email sent to them which takes them to an online form.

• Once all required Approvals have been received, the Case process can continue again*.

*Important note: If the approval action times out with no or insufficient responses, current system behaviour is that the Case flow will recommence as if full approval was received.

To use 'Approval' Actions, you need to create an 'Approval' Action type and then add the Action into your Case flows.

Creating an Approval Action Type

You can either create an Approval Action type in the Service Line section of Builder, or directly from your Case flow.

From the Service Lines Page

Creating an Approval Action type from the Service Lines page adds the Action type to your menu of available Actions when you're building flows subsequently in Cases.

To do this, in the Service Line page, select which service line you would like to add the Approval Action to and then click on the plus symbol next to the 'Process Search' box. This will bring up a drop down menu where you can select an Action.

This will open up a new Action for you to create.

Add a name and description to your Action and then in the type drop down select 'Approval Action'.

Once you are happy with your Action, hit save to create it. This Action can now be added to new and existing business processes by selecting it from the dropdown list when adding a new Action to a Case.

From a Case Flow

Alternatively you can add an Approval Action type directly from the Case flow itself.

To do this, open a Case flow in edit mode, click on an Action's menu and then instead of clicking to add an existing Action, select to create a new Action by clicking the '+' icon.

Give the Action a name, add a description if you wish and for its type, select 'Approval Action'.

This will add the Approval Action to the Case flow.

Configuring Approval Actions

You now need to configure the settings for the new Action you have added to your Case. Click on the Action in the flow to highlight it in the info section.

In the Action Info tab, you need to add the usual following information for an Action:

Setting	Description	Notes
When is it due?	Select a value from the dropdown menu of Due Date ‘flavours’	Mandatory to set live. (See Due Date Flavours Settings for more information).
Who does it go to?	Select a value from the dropdown menu of Allocation ‘flavours’	Mandatory to set live. (See Allocation Flavours Settings for more information).
General Settings	Select a value from the dropdown menu of Follow Up ‘flavours’	Mandatory to set live. (See General Settings Flavours Settings for more information).
Main Card	You can select a Custom Card to display on the main section of the Action screen.	Optional. See here for more information about Custom Cards.
Side Card	You can select a Custom Card to display on the side panel of the Action screen.	Optional. See here for more information about Custom Cards.
Manual Creation	Switching this setting on allows the Action to be started manually in Work Manager.	Optional. See Adding Ad-hoc Actions section for more information.
Checklist	Here you can add local checks to the Action that help support 'custom' activities that take place for that specific Action. You can also edit the global checks for the Action type from here too, if it has any.	Optional. See here for more information about adding checklists.

Additionally, once an Approval Action has been added to your Case flow, a new 'Approval' tab will display in the info grid.

Here you need to add the following settings that are only relevant for Approval Actions.

Setting	Description	Notes
Approval Type	Select an approval type.	Multilevel - More than one level of approval is required. Request is sent to the first-level approver and, only if approved, onto the next level, and so on, up to a maximum of three levels. If you've selected Multilevel, you will also need to add how many levels of approval are needed in the 'Approval Levels' column (maximum 3). Parallel Any - The approval request is sent to multiple people at the same time, and the decision is taken from the first one to respond. A maximum of 5 approvers can be specified at runtime. Parallel All - The approval is sent to multiple people at the same time, and approval is needed from all of them. If any decline, the approval is declined. A maximum of 5 approvers can be specified at runtime.
Approval Levels	Enter the number of approval levels you would like the request to have, up to a maximum of 3.	Only relevant if you have selected 'Multilevel' as your approval type. If you have selected either of the two parallel approval types, the approval levels will automatically be set to 1.
Approval Request Email	Select which approval email template you would like to be sent out to the approvers	See this section to find out how to create and adjust approval email templates.