Starting An Approval Request

Approval requests are used to move a Draft Document into an approval queue. An approval request is made up of approvers, assistants and delegates. To start the approval process for your Document (Report), select Approval Request from the options menu.

Once you have decided to start an approval workflow you will be taken to the New Approval Process page

To view/ make any edits before the approval begins, click “View Document”.

Upload Supporting Documents if available. Supported document types are the following:

• Word
• PowerPoint
• Excel
• Images
• PDF

Select from the Approval Group drop down which group of users will be tasked with completing the approval request. NOTE: There may be multiple approval groups for your department/meeting type combination. If there are more than one approval group, they will be displayed in a dropdown menu, as shown below.

1. When ready, click “Start Approval”.
2. You have now successfully initiated a report approval request and alerted the required participants of their approval tasks.
3. Upon initiating the approval workflow, the initiator will receive an email notification indicating that the workflow has started.
4. Each approver will have an email notification and approval task assigned sequentially and will receive an email asking them to approve or decline the document. Depending on the configuration settings of the selected approval workflow, approvers may be able to edit the document directly, or simply make comments and approve or reje select “Approval Request” from the menu and click “Cancel Request”.  The document status changes to Cancelled.ct the document.
5. To cancel/terminate the request,
6. To initiate a new request, click Approval Request from the menu > New Approval Request

Cancelling an Approval Request

At any time through an Approval workflow, it is possible for Administrators and Contributors to Cancel (terminate) an in-progress Approval  by selecting Approval Request from the drop-down menu next to the Title of the document and clicking on Cancel Request. 

The status of the Document will move from In-Progress  to Cancelled and will remain under the Draft Tab:

Starting an Exception Approval

Documents that are past the submission deadline will require the initiator to select the Exception Approval Group (Step 1) as displayed below and then clicking" Start Exception Approval" (Step 2). The approval begins and emails the designated users in the Approval steps. In the event the approval is declined, the Document status will be changed to Declined.

Starting a Mid Approval Late Exception Workflow for Late Items

Mid - Approval  Late Exception is run when the Meeting Submission Date and Time passes in the middle of a regular approval workflow when some Approvers have already approved the report.

Note: If the setting, Run Late Exception Workflow for Mid Workflow Items is selected in Report Manager  Settings, then only Administrators can start the workflow. If it is set to Not Allowed, then Administrators cannot start the workflow.

The Contributor and Sponsor (if assigned), will receive an e-mail notification stating that the Workflow has been Paused, and the Administrator must be contacted, because it has become Late during the Approval Process.

The Meeting Type Administrator(s) will receive an email that the Workflow has been paused and that an exception workflow must be run. Click on the link in the email to find the approval process. Alternatively, an Admin needs to select an Exception Group from the Action Log Approvals page.

Choose the Exception Group that will approve the Mid Exception Workflow. Select Start Exception Workflow to begin the approval process.

A processing screen appears showing the workflow has started. Once the Exception Group approves the report, it goes to the next Approver in the regular approval workflow group.