Request Approval via Email only

steveturley · ‎06-13-2022

Hi. Is it possible / feasible to have many Request approvals completed only via email responses (i.e. the 'click here to approve' link) without the approver having a licence of any sort?

I know we could use the Business Stakeholder licence, but there are lots of potential approvers and if we could process approvals via email only with the need to pay a licence cost for these, that would be a solution.

Thanks!

Brian Sorensen · ‎06-13-2022

Thats what we do

We have the approval email go to anyone, you don't have to license them to approve via email.

You do have to license them if you want to the get more information about the approval.

I have a common variable set on ALL my items that need approval.

Its setup with the following

User Item is for
Approver
Reason why

Then we modified the approval email to send the Reason Why in the body of the email.

In the flows, I pull these variables in at the start and then push the notifications to the appropriate variable.

View solution in original post

steveturley · ‎06-15-2022

Thanks @Brian Sorensen

That's really useful. We haven't moved our RITM's to flow's yet (still workflows), but I have used your syntax of ${document_id.variables.variablename} in the notification and it works perfectly.

So you use the standard Variable Set across all the RITM's and differentiate them by Item Name and Business Reason? Presumably any other variable on the RITM's aren't used for approval and are only of use to fulfillers inside SN?

Thanks again

Steve

Brian Sorensen · ‎06-15-2022

Essentially yes.

Anything that I have in the catalog that has an approval, I have 2 variable sets that I use

The first is our User information set, it has

User Name
Manager
Business Reason

The Manager is read only for most, there are some where we let the person pick a different approver if needed, but its coded so that you enter the persons name, and the manager field populates

The second we have is a payment one, and that because we use Budget codes, and giving someone free text to enter a complex code... they always mess it up 🙂

We had been using the standard Workflow, but moved over to Flows as you can do some really interesting things.

We have an access form that I have hidden fields on, for this the person makes a request, a task is sent to the team to review, they fill in the hidden fields, the flow then collects those values and determines the next steps 🙂

very easy to use, and it could just be me, I like the GUI better.

Brian Sorensen · ‎04-21-2023

Hi Steve,

We have a number of variable sets, but anything with an approval I have this as the first set, then add the additional things as needed

JoelatNow · ‎04-21-2023

Hi Brian, I'm 70% confident that email approvals do (should) require a license. They result in an approval record (sysapproval_approver) update for that user against the target scope (source table). Especially if User A has a recorded action (approval / disapproval) in this table, that user would need an appropriate license for the scope of the source table. Allen is correct to speak to your ServiceNow Account Executive, mine thinks a license is needed.

Brian Sorensen · ‎04-21-2023

Hi Joelat

we have 10 approver licenses in our instance for the a selected group, and over 300 people managers that do not have any license. All of them are able to approve via the Out of box approval email flow.

From what we had been told and seen, the approver license gives them access to Approval on the Self Service page, and access to the back end for easier use, but based on how we have our notification setup, it hasn't been an issue in the 3 years we have had it going