Approval Records#
Approval actions are recorded as they are performed - approved, not approved, cancelled etc. Approval Records contain such information as the approval timestamp, the approver, the status of the approval and the reference ID the approval is for. Employees are able to check the approval status of their transactions at any time. Administrators can see the detailed approval records on IDAP.
When an approval entity becomes eligible for approval, “Notification approval records” are created. These are approval records with the approval status of “Ready for Approval”. There is one record for each identity defined as an approver for the first step of approval. These records in conjunction with workflow can be used to notify approvers of pending approvals.
Each stage dictates what approval records are created. The Approval records are what is used to create a visual (approval bar) or report ( discoverer) to show where and who the approval sits, whether it's before during or after the approval.
The current supported approval record statuses are:
- Approval Cancelled
- Future Approval
- Ready To Be Approved
- Approval In Progress
- Approved
- Sent Back
- Approved Sent Back
- Approved Historic
- Declined
- Declined Historic
- Approval Cancelled
- used when an entity is cancelled or deleted. All existing approval records will receive this status. (explained in a following section)
- Future Approval
- used for up and coming approvals to be made for an approver who do not have upto approval.
Approval Stages which cause this are Stage_WorkInProcess or Stage_WaitingApproval.
For the Stage_WorkInProcess futural Approvals are optional and can be controlled but a site preference defined in IMST.
Each table where approvers need as much time a possible before the actual approval is required may be defined. in the example screen shot below.
Future approval records will be created when either a Time sheet or Personnel Action is set to a WIP status.
Example: This may be helpful for managers with employees that have time sheets which have not been submitted for approval.
- Ready To Be Approved
- This is used for approvers which are required to make approval decisions.
- Approval In Progress
- This is used to show approvers with `Up To approval` that there is an approval in progress which they can make an up to approval on.
- Approved
- This is used to show a positive approval.
- Sent Back
- This is used to show the approval process has been requested to start over.
- Approved Sent Back
- This is used to show a lower step positive approval has been send back to be re-done.
- Approval Historic
- This is used to show and entity has had a positive approval but is no longer needed either through a cancel or deletion.
- Declined
- This is used to show a negative approval.
- Declined Historic
- This is used to show a negative approval was made and is no longer needed either though a cancel or deletion.
Once an approval is made (for example a time sheet) an approval record is created for that identity with the appropriate status (approved, not approved, cancelled). At this time the old “notification records” are removed and notification records are created for the next step.
The next step will be determined by a couple of factors.
- The current step and its next defined step.
- the step that the approver identity is part of and if that identity is an up to approver.
- If there are any more steps in the process.
