Can we redirect approvals?

[ashwinipingle]

Dear flow experts,

How can we re-direct the approvals from one approver to another?

Best Regards,

Ashwini Pingle

[Tejas Adhalrao]

Hi @ashwinipingle ,

Could you please describe your requirements in more detail so that we can provide a suitable solution?

thanks,

tejas

Email: adhalraotejas1018@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejas1018

[ashwinipingle]

One approver has 3 approval records (sysapproval_approver table) which he has to approve. Unfortunately he left the company. So we need to assign this to his replacement. We do not want to go through re-initiating the workflow. Is there a way to re-assign the earlier approver with his new replacement approver?

The approval is for project (pm_project)

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

Hi @ashwinipingle 

Once an approval is triggered we can't do any thing, means you need to manually add a new approver .not sure a new approval will get email and system will add any validation. It's all manual work. Best is cancel old approval and trigger again by adding a new one.

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

@ashwinipingle  Did you check my response.

[ManishSharma2]

Recommended approach: 

Option 1: Re-trigger the Approval (Best Practice)

• Update the approver in the workflow/flow
• Cancel the current approval request
• Initiate a new approval request

This ensures proper notifications and maintains a clean audit trail.

Option 2: Manual Reassignment (If re-triggering isn't feasible)

• Update the approver field directly in the sysapproval_approver record (manually or via script)
• Note: Email notifications will NOT be automatically sent to the new approver

To avoid this in future:

Implement fallback mechanisms to handle approver unavailability:

1. Auto-redirect to manager or some fallback project approval group when the assigned approver is inactive.
2. Use approval groups instead of individual approvers (e.g., "Project Approvers" group)
3. Configure delegation rules for automatic reassignment during absences via the Granular Delegation feature of ServiceNow.