Submit for Approval

For some incident and service requests you may want approval from higher officials before you proceed with resolving the request. The Submit for Approval option enables you to send an e-mail notification to the user to approve the request.

While most incident requests do not require an approval process, the service requests, on the other hand, may go through multiple stages of approval. These multiple stages are usually configured while configuring the work flow of a service item. Refer Service Item - Work Flow under Admin Configurations -> Service Catalog to know more on configuring multiple stage approval.

NOTE:

1. The Approvers may be technicians or requesters with permission to Approve Service Request and should possess an e-mail address in the application.

2. Apart from multiple stage approval, the steps to submit incident and service requests are similar. The topic explains steps to submit service request for approval

Submitting Service Request for Approval

The Approval Details is usually configured while configuring the Service Request. You can configure up to 5 stages of approvals for a service request. Each stage may possess one or more approvers.

If you have not configured the Approval Details for a service request and want to submit the request for approval, then

1. Click Requests tab in the header pane.

2. Click the Subject link of the request to submit for approval.

3. In the Request Details page, click Actions drop-down menu and select Submit for Approval option. The Submit for Recommendation window pops up.

4. Specify the To address in the field. If you want to specify more than two e-mail addresses then use comma as the separator.

5. By default, the Subject of the e-mail is specified. You can edit the same, if required. The Subject is a mandatory field.

6. Specify the relevant Description in the given text field. The $ApprovalLink is a variable and should be available in the mail to replace the variable with the link where you have the request details.

7. Click Send. An e-mail notification is sent to the users specified in the To address. Using the link in the mail, the approver can approve/reject the request.

Simultaneously, the Approvals tab appears between the Work Log tab and History tab. The Approvals tab lists the e-mail address of the approvers, the status of the approval, the date and time of the approval notification, the date and time when the approver had approved/rejected the request and the comments provided by the approver.

NOTE: Submitting Incident Requests for Approval follows similar steps (Step 1 to Step 7) as Submitting Service Request for Approval.

From the Approvals tab of a service request, you can either add the next consecutive approval stages or add another approver for a stage. You can also resubmit notification to an approver, if required.

Adding Approver to Stage

To add another approver to a stage,

1. Click Add button. The Submit for Recommendation window pops up.

2. Follow Step 4 to Step 7 in Submitting Service Request for Approval to send an e-mail notification to the approver.

Adding an Approval Stage

To add the next approval stage,

1. Click Add Stage button. The Submit for Recommendation window pops up.

2. Follow Step 4 to Step 7 to send an e-mail notification to the approver.

Multiple Stage Approval

The multiple stage approval are based on the notifications enabled in Work Flow.

If Send approval notification automatically when a service request is raised is enabled, then an approval notification is sent to the concerned authority each time a service request is raised. If you have configured multiple stages of approvals, then the notification is sent to the next consecutive stage only on approval from the previous stage i.e., any one approver can approve the service request.

If All configured approvers have to approve the Service Request is enabled, then its mandatory for all the configured approvers to approve the service request. If anyone of the approver (at any stage) rejects the service request, then the request does not proceed to the next stage.

NOTE: If you have selected more than one approver in a stage, then all the approvers in that stage should approve the request.

Resubmitting approval notification

To resubmit the notification to an approver,

1. Select the check box beside the approver and click Send button. A dialog box confirming the operation appears.

2. Click OK to proceed. An e-mail notification is resubmitted to the selected approver.

Deleting an Approver

You can delete an approver from any stage before the approver records his decision. If the approver has recorded his decision, then the delete icon would not appear.

1. Click the Delete icon beside the approver e-mail address. A dialog box confirming the delete operation appears.

2. Click OK to proceed. The approver is deleted from the list. The deleted approver will not be able to access the link provided in the e-mail notification.