Approvals in Service Operation Workspace

[Tobi3]

Edit:
With the newest version of SOW, all of what I wrote is no longer true.
Approvals work in SOW the same way they work in classic UI 🙂

Hello everyone,

we're facing an issue with the SOW and I just want to ensure that I'm not missing something important. If some parts of the post feel like I'm ranting, that's because I am.

A lot of our customers are using the SOW for basically everything regarding ITSM processes. And one thing that everybody is missing, are approvals. Maybe that's not the idea of the SOW, I don't know.
So what we're usually doing is to add a few lists to the SOW: Approvals > Assigned to you, Open, All
That way, people can easily check their open approvals without leaving the SOW.

But here the problems begin. The ootb UI/UX for approvals in the SOW is very bad. Compared with the classic UI, where you can see the item summary and can do things like denying individual RITMs before approving a request, the SOW approvals are basically blank. I think the RITM approval shows some details, but that's it.
Since you cannot use formatters in workspaces, the classic UI functionality cannot easily be ported to SOW.

What are we left with?
1. always go to the item that needs to be approved to check out the details. In the case of requests, you need to check all RITMs individually as well

2. use classic UI 

3. use Employee Center
4. Customization with UI Builder?

Am I missing something? Is there an easy way to get a great UX in SOW so that people do not need to leave the workspace to do all of their work?

Kind regards,
Tobi

[vaishali231]

hey @Tobi3 
Approvals in SOW are available, but the UX is very basic compared to the classic UI. Because formatters are not supported in workspaces, approvers do not get enough context and often need to open the related records to understand what they are approving, especially for requests with multiple RITMs.

In practice, most customers handle approvals outside SOW, either in the classic UI or in Employee Center, and keep SOW focused on ticket execution. A richer approval experience in SOW is only possible through custom UI Builder work, which comes with effort and maintenance.

*************************************************************************************************************
If this response helps, please mark it as Accept as Solution and Helpful.
Doing so helps others in the community and encourages me to keep contributing.

Regards
Vaishali Singh

[Mark Manders · Accepted solution]

The OOB SOW has a 'My Approvals' list. And opening an approval as an ITIL user (for whom SOW is created), I see the complete record I am approving. So I guess you need to check the customizations you have if it's not the case on your instance(s).

[Tobi3]

Interesting, seems like that's new with Zurich / a newer SOW Plugin version.
OOTB Yokohama instance does not have "my approvals" in SOW, OOTB Zurich instance has it.

So apparently ServiceNow changed their mind regarding approvals in SOW 🙂

I'll check out how the details look like for various items that can be approved.

[Tobi3]

@Mark Manders 
you're completely right. Everything I complained about was solved by ServiceNow a few months ago with a new SOW release.
Same functionality as in classic ui