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*.

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:

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.