Clarification on Group Approvals vs Individual Approvals for Change Requests

[bangaruvija]

Hi Team,

We are using Change Management with Group Approvals. We have disabled Individual Approvals and are currently using only Group Approvals.

I have two questions regarding the approval behavior:

1. For one Change Request, two group approvals are created.
   • Group 1 has 5 members.
   • Group 2 has 2 members, but both users are already members of Group 1.

When I temporarily enable Individual Approvals and check the approver records, individual approval records are created only for Group 1. No individual approval records are created for Group 2, even though a second group approval record exists.

Is this expected behavior? Does ServiceNow prevent creating duplicate individual approval records when the same users belong to multiple approval groups? If yes, what is the reason behind this behavior?

1. We are currently using only Group Approvals. When a group approval is approved, I have written a Business Rule that updates the related individual approval records to either Approved or No Longer Required.

Could this Business Rule cause any issues with the approval engine, reporting, auditing, or future approval processing? Is there a recommended approach for handling this scenario?

Any insights or best practices would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

Hi @bangaruvija 

I think this is OOTB behaviour. When a group approval is required, all individual group members should no longer be automatically added. Did you check the OTB request? This may have been configured in the RITM approval.