How to make Approvals Accepted Approved And No Longer Required?

[chris_choi]

Hello,

I feel this question is pretty straight forward, but wasn't able to find anything directly related, so my apologizes if this was asked before.

In our Change Module we have a CAB Approval that is currently awaiting Everyone to Approve. The reasoning behind this was we we didn't want the CAB approval to be approved without key approvals before moving forward. So what typically happens is when enough approvals come in from the right individuals our Change Manager will go in and mass update the Remaining "Requested" approvals to Approved and then to "No Longer Required". Approving all of them will move the workflow forward and setting them back to no longer requested keeps track of who didn't actually approve.

What we are wondering is if there is an easy way to set this approval so that it will accept both Approved and No Longer Required for a everyone to approve setting? This way the CM can just go in and set them to no longer required and the workflow can move forward.

I imagine we would use conditions based on script, but the extent of what I am familiar with is how to set the # of approvals, # of rejections, % of approves, etc.

Thanks to anyone who is able to provide any insight, on what we are trying to accomplish.

[Uncle Rob]

Yes, I understand.   The problem is you're hacking the intent of the existing values to gain an effect provided OOB when you don't use "Everyone Must Approve".

If "everyone must approve" is a compliance necessity, then you're doing double damage by erasing the approval event anyway.

So if you moved to a "only one person needs to approve", as soon as one party approves, all the other approvals automagically become "No Longer Required".   This results in ...

- Auditors determining who exactly provided the authorization

- No scary audit repercussions by allowing one user to approve anothers' record.

- Maintaining the intended utility of "No Longer Required" vs. "Approved" and "Rejected"

- Same net effect of what you're trying to accomplish, with zero hacking.

[chris_choi]

For our purposes, we dont have our approval set to "Everyone must approve", because we need our entire CAB to always completely approve a change. We have over 30 members in our CAB and we did not want the workflow to move forward from an set # of approvals automatically lets say as an example >50% because there may key members we need feedback from, depending on what the change is for.

So we have set up the approval so that our Change Manager can review the changes by a case by case and once we have all the needed changes, we can than move it forward.

I understand this isn't what Everyone Must Approve approvals are meant to do, but we didnt find any other method to accomplish what I am describing. If we took away the Everyone Must Approve, I dont see a way to say "Enough Have Approved"

[Uncle Rob]

May I ask what drives the need of that many people needing to approve?     The reason I ask is that you typically build approvals to satisfy an audit / compliance condition... otherwise you're slowing down ops.   So the danger here is that you're saying Everyone Must Approve, but you're supplying a single user an over-ride, which invalidates the auditability.

You can also script your approval requirements.   Perhaps some of these models might work:
- Once X actual approvals are issued (lets say 5)
- Once X% of approvals are issued

... and then have a scripted condition which rejects on *any* rejection.

[Uncle Rob]

Hey Chris,

"No Longer Required" is a different *end point* than "Approved".   Its purpose is to capture approvals that were issued but became obsolete because the workflow was approved (or rejected) by another authorized party.   Differentiating between No Longer Required and Approved/Rejected shows auditors the exact, traceable source of authorization.   If you move all approval records to No Longer Required after approval/rejection, you're erasing that traceability.   Approvals are the auditing records, not just a mechanism to advance workflow.

You're setting up competing ideals.   You tell the Workflow that "Everyone must Approve".   Then, after one person approves (Change Manager override), you're making the data say "Nobody needs to approve anymore".

I would simplify your approval model to either require all people to physically approve OR require approval only from your Change Manager.   I would then adjust your reporting model such that you understand the difference of intent between "No Longer Required" and "Approved".

[chris_choi]

thanks for the feedback,

Just to clarify, we are setting approvals that are not yet approved to approved then no longer required.

Example:

User 1 - Approved

User 2 - Requested

User 3 - Approved

In this example we set User 2 to Approved and then only User 2's approval is set back to No Longer Required. We do this to distinguish who actually approved and who we no longer needed additional approvals from. Also I failed to mention this is specifically for the use of Emergency Changes, so this is helpful when folks are on vacation or unavailable for time sensitive emergency changes.