The Action Approval node makes it easy to incorporate single or multi-level approvals into any business process. Effortlessly route approvals based on criteria such as department or amount, notify users of pending approvals via email, and send automated reminders to ensure timely action. If no action is taken, the node can escalate the request to keep your process moving forward seamlessly.

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Acton Approval Node

This process allows for any combination of:

• Single or Multi Level approval processes.

• Dollar driven approval processes.

• Department based approval processes.

End User Interactions

If enabled by the system admin, end users receive notifications when documents have arrived needing approval and can set up a Favorites search to quickly see a list of all invoices awaiting their approval. Each document is then opened in the Document Viewer and action can be taken.

Email Notification

Email notifications are managed by your system administrator. If you're not receiving notifications for documents requiring approval, please reach out to your system administrator.

Anytime a document enters the Invoice Approval queue, reenters the Invoice Approval queue when no action is taken, or the approval cannot be bypassed, you will receive an email notification of the waiting document with a link to a search to display all documents awaiting your action.

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Workflow Email

1. Reminder Count - Each time the notification is sent for the document, this number in increments. This is the number of reminders sent. The number of reminders sent before the invoice is automatically escalated is determined by your system administrator.

2. Search URL - Direct link to the search that will display all documents awaiting your action in the GlobalSearch Go Search Results View.

Approval Actions

The following actions are available for all documents in the Invoice Approval queue:

• Approve - Moves the document forward in the process.

  • If you are the Final Approver, the document will exit the approval portion of the workflow with the Approval Status set to Approved.

  • If you are not the Final Approver, the document will continue in the approval portion of the workflow routing to the next approver.

• Reassign - Exits the approval portion of the workflow with an Approval Status of Reassigned. What happens next is determined by your system administrator.

• Hold - Keep the document in the current approval state with an Approval Status of On Hold. No further notifications will be sent. The document will remain in the Invoice Approval queue until a manual action is taken.

• Reject - Exits the approval portion of the workflow with an Approval Status of Rejected. What happens next is determined by your system administrator.

Your system administrator may have added additional actions. Consult your system administrator for the purpose of any actions not listed above.

Favorites

Add the Invoice to Approve search to your Favorites pane in the Navigation Panel to quickly view a list of documents awaiting your action.

If you do not have access to the Invoices to Approve search, consult your system administrator.

Prerequisites Configurations

GlobalSearch Prerequisites

Preconfigured Archive

It is recommended you deploy the Business Essentials Accounts Payable (Workflow) archive from the Square 9 Solutions Delivery Network to use in conjunction with the Action Approval node. This archive is preconfigured with all the necessary fields to work seamlessly with the Action Approval node.

Using your Own Archive

If you are choosing to use your own Accounts Payable archive, it MUST contain the following fields:

Search Creation

Users

There is no binding between the User Account assigned in the Approver Rules in GlobalForms and the user in GlobalSearch. To take action on documents, the user MUST:

• Exist in GlobalSearch with the same User Account (email address) name.

• Have a License allocated.

• Be secured to the appropriate archive (Accounts Payable (Workflow)) and the search referenced in the email (Invoices to Approve).

• Be secured to the Invoice Approval queue directly or belong to one of the following groups:

  • Accounts Payable

  • Bills - Accounts Payable

  • Bills - Approvers

  • Any other group you have assigned to the Invoice Approval queue.

Workflow Prerequisites

Download the Square 9 Multi Level Approval Flow from the Square 9 Solutions Delivery Network - This will import:

• Square 9 Multi Level Approval GlobalAction workflow

• Action Approval Node

• Amount Based Approval Resource GlobalForms resource

• Department Approval Resource GlobalForms resource

• Multi Level Approval Dashboard GlobalForms form

Configure the Departments list in GlobalForms to match the Departments list in GlobalSearch.

Configure Approval Rules in GlobalForms.

Create the Approval Management Dashboard.

Update the link for Manage Approvals on the Multi Level Approval Dashboard form to launch your Approval Management Dashboard.

Approval Process Configuration

Creating and Managing Approval Groups and Rules

Creating and managing Approval Groups and Approval Rules is entirely done from the Approver Management dashboard.

You can access the Approver Management dashboard using the following link:

https://forms-myinstancename.mysquare9.com:5454/view/#!/multilevelapprovaldashboard

Just replace myinstancename with the name of your GlobalForms instance. If you are unsure of the name of your instance, you can login to GlobalForms and get it from the URL.

Approval Groups

Using Group Maintenance, create a list of any Approval Groups that will be part of the approval process. Approval Groups can be added to, removed from, or modified at any time. Your Approval Groups may be a list of Departments, Teams, or any other way you organize your approval processes.

1. Login to Approver Management dashboard and select Group Maintenance.

Adding A Group

2. Select Add a Group.

3. Enter the Approver Group name and click Submit.

4. Repeat step 3 to add additional Departments.

5. When finished click Return to return to the Approver Management dashboard or select Edit or Delete a Group to modify or remove existing Approver Groups.

Modifying or Deleting Approver Groups

1. Select Edit or Delete a Group.

2. Use Select an Approver to select an Approver Group to delete or modify.

3. Click View Submission.

7. When finished click Return to return to the Approver Management dashboard, select Add a Group to add a new Approver Group, or select Edit or Delete a Group to modify or remove existing Approver Groups.

Creating Approval Rules

Using Approver Maintenance, define your approval rules. Approval rules have 4 components:

• User Account - Who is responsible for this approval?

• Department - What department does this rule apply to?

• Amount - What is the maximum amount of the document to which this rule is applied?

• Final Approver - Is this the last person that needs to approve the document before returning continuing on in the workflow?

1. Login to Approver Management dashboard and select Approver Maintenance.

Adding Approval Rules

2. Select Add an Approver.

3. Enter the Username. This MUST be an email address for the person who is responsible for this approval, select the Group from the dropdown list, and enter the MAXIMUM Amount of the document to which this rule applies.

4. If no further approvals are needed once this rule has been applied, enable Final Approver. If another level of approval is needed, leave Final Approver disabled.

5. Click Submit.

6. Repeat to add additional Rules.

7. When finished click Return to return to the Approver Management dashboard or select Edit or Delete an Approver to modify or remove existing Approval Rules.

Modifying and Deleting Approval Rules

2. Select Edit or Delete an Approver.

3. From the Select an Approver dropdown list, select the rule to modify. The data is presented: Department - Username - Amount.

4. Select View Submission.

7. When finished click Return to return to the Approver Management dashboard, select Add an Approver to add a new Approver Group, or select Edit or Delete an Approver to modify or remove existing Approver Groups.

Creating the Approval Management Dashboard

Use Tasks Lists to create a list of rules to easily view all rules being applied and modify or delete existing rules.

1. Login to GlobalForms as an Administrator.

2. In the Forms pane, find the Task List Dashboard form and click View.

3. Click Create New Task List.

Header Configuration

4. Give the dashboard a Name. This name is only visible to the system administrator when managing dashboards.

5. Enter a Title to display at the top of the dashboard. It does not have to be the same as your Dashboard Name. This title is visible to all users who access the dashboard.

6. Optionally, Upload an Image to add a logo to your dashboard.

7. Optionally, enable Enable Search Bar Filter if you would like to add a search bar to search the list of rules for specific values.

Form Configuration

8. From the Select Your Form dropdown, select Amount Based Approval Resource.

9. The Label should be ApproverGroupName Approvers. Insert the name of one of your Approver Groups.

10. Under Field, add the Username field and click Add Another Field.

11. Add Fields for Amount and Final Approver.

12. Enable Filter the Forms Submissions.

    1. In the Add a Static Filter section under Field, select Department.

    2. Under Static Value, enter the DepartmentName you used in the Label field.

13. Click Add Another Form and repeat Steps 8 - 13 for each Department.

14. Click Save Task List.

Launch the Task and And Get the Task List URL

15. Launch the Approval Management task list by clicking Launch Task List.

16. Copy the URL to your clipboard.

Updating the Manager Approvers Link

17. In the Forms pane, find the Multi Level Approval Dashboard form and click Edit.

18. Hover over Manage Approvers and select the Edit ( ) icon.

19. From the Display tab of the HTML Element Component, scroll to the bottom of the Content text box.

20. Paste the following at the end of the text in the Content text box:

21. Click Save to close the HTML Element Component popup, saving your changes.

22. Click Save Form.

Viewing Your Approval Rules

23. Login to Approver Management dashboard and select Approvers Dashboard to view your Approval Management Dashboard.

Workflow Construction

To get the most out of the action approval node, you need to build a process that ingests the correct documents and performs any desired actions before routing to approval. This may be as simple as checking a condition for due date or more complex like performing an automate 3 way match.

Once the documents exits the approval process, you will need to handle what happens based on the Approval Status and any other actions you want taken such as moving the document to a different archive or releasing the data to an accounting application.

The Calling Workflow

This is the workflow that will initiate the process. Design and construct your pre-approval processes. This is anything would would like to do to the document or its data before going off to the approval process.

1. Create a GlobalSearch search that returns documents to enter into the approval process. It is recommended you use a name that indicates the search is designed to be used in this GlobalAction workflow such as GlobalAction - Invoice Approval.

2. Add an Initiator node to your design canvas. Configure the Title, Description, and Frequency. Select GlobalSearch and select the search that returns documents needing approval.

3. In addition to any Process Fields you need for your workflow, you can use the following fields to your calling workflow to control different aspects of the approval process.

4. Escalation Days - Change the number of days the document will loop and remind the current approver to take action.

   1. Default Setting - The default setting is 3 days. You do not need to include or set the Escalation Days in your calling workflow to use the default setting.

   2. Custom Escalations - Set the Escalation Days equal to the number of days before escalation should occur. This is done in whole number increments, no partial days.

   3. Disable Escalations - Setting the Escalation Days equal to 0 will disable auto-escalation. No escalations will occur.

5. From Address - Change the From address in the notification email.

   1. Default Settings - The default address is multilevelapproval_noreply@square-9.com. You do not need to include or set the From Address in your calling workflow to use the default setting.

   2. Custom From Address - To change the From Address to something different, add the From Address to your Process Fields pane and set the value.

      1. It must be in email format: user@domain.com

      2. You can change the User and keep the @square-9.com Domain without making any other changes.

      3. If you wish to use your own/custom domain name, you will need to provide your own SMTP mail gateway.

   3. Disable Email Notifications - Adding the From Address to your Process Fields pane and setting it to none will disable email notifications for ALL users.

6. Add any additional pre-approval process after your Initiator node.

Adding the Action Approval Node

Use the Action Approval node to send documents through the approval process and return them to your workflow.

Add the Action Approval node to the design canvas and connect the pre-approval portion of your workflow to the Action Approval node. The Action Approval node requires no configuration.

Finishing the Workflow

Design and construct any post-approval processes including those to handle Approvals, Rejections, Reassignments and Errors before ending your workflow.

7. Documents return to your workflow from the Action Approval node can have the following Approval Statuses: Approved, Rejected, Reassigned, or Approver Error. Your post approval workflow process should handle each of these statuses. Some possible processes could be:

   1. Approved - Route to an iPaaS node for release to your accounting solution.

   2. Reassigned - If corrected by the previous approver, route back into the Action Approval node for approval by the correct department. If not corrected, route to a Queue for correction before routing back into an approval process.

   3. Rejected - Send a notification to a person that handles Rejected documents and hold in a Rejected Documents Queue or release the document from the workflow to be handled by a separate workflow for Rejected documents.

   4. Approver Error - Route to a separate Queue for errored approvals where they can be corrected and sent back into the approval process. Combine with this the Batch Manager and a GlobalCapture Search to view the process history of the document to determine the step the error occurred at and make necessary corrections before routing the document back through the approval process.

8. Add an End node to complete your process.