Notifications in Advanced Approval Management
Summarize
Summary of Notifications in Advanced Approval Management
In Advanced Approval Management, notifications are automatically sent to approval requesters and approvers as approval requests progress through the workflow. The notification system supports various approval scenarios including simple and consolidated requests, reminders, escalations, and overrides, enhancing communication and timely action in the approval process.
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Key Features
- Automated Notifications: Several system notifications are pre-activated, including Advanced Approval Request, Approval Reminder, Approval Escalation, Approval Request for Override, and notifications for recalled requests.
- Approval Request Notifications:
- Simple Approvals: Individual notifications are sent to each approver when a request is submitted, allowing direct approval or rejection from the notification.
- Consolidated Approvals: Multiple requests for the same approver can be combined into one email if enabled, enabling batch approval or rejection and reply-based commands for convenience.
- Mobile Push Notifications: Approval emails can be delivered as push notifications via the ServiceNow Mobile app when enabled.
- Ad-hoc Approvers: Receive simple approval notifications and can manage approvals via the notification or the approval workflow interface.
- Approval Reminders: Automatically sent based on configured schedules to prompt approvers, including first, subsequent, and final reminders which may trigger escalation.
- Approval Escalations: Notifications sent when approvers do not act within the set timeframe, informing both original approvers and escalation assignees.
- Overrides: Approval admins with the requester role can override approval steps, triggering notifications to original approvers that their action is no longer needed.
- Recall Notifications: Inform approvers when an approval request has been recalled by the requester.
- State Change Notifications: Inform requesters when their approval request status changes to approved, rejected, or recalled.
Notification Prerequisites and Configuration
- Email Setup: Ensure outbound and inbound email configurations are enabled for sending and receiving notifications.
- Notification Management: Admins can review and customize default notifications and associated email templates in the System Notifications module filtered by Advanced Approval Management.
- User Preferences: Approvers and requesters should verify that they are subscribed to the Advanced Approvals notification category and have set preferred delivery channels such as email or mobile push notifications.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
This notification framework enables timely and clear communication throughout the approval process, reducing delays and improving transparency. Customers can expect streamlined approval operations with configurable reminders and escalations, consolidated notifications for efficiency, and override capabilities to handle exceptional cases. Proper configuration ensures that all stakeholders stay informed via their preferred communication channels, enhancing the overall approval management experience.
In Advanced Approval Management, as an approval request moves through the approval process, notifications about the status of the approval request are sent automatically to approval requesters and approvers.
Overview of approval notifications
- Advanced Approval Request
- Approval Reminder
- Approval Escalation
- Approval Request for Override
- Notify approval req requester
- Notify approval req approvers
- Advanced Approval Request notifications
- The Advanced Approval Request notification informs approvers when an approval request has been submitted by a sales agent (requester). There are two types of approval request notifications: simple and consolidated.
- Simple approvals: A notification is sent to each approver when an approval request is submitted, as shown in the following example. The approver can approve or reject the approval request from the notification.
- Consolidated approvals: When an approver receives multiple approval requests for approvals within the same set of approvals, the system can consolidate those requests into a single notification email, if your approval rules admin has turned on the email consolidation feature in your approval configuration.
Both simple and consolidated approval emails are handled through a single notification definition, with different rendering logic used to generate the appropriate message format. These approval request emails can be delivered as mobile push notifications, if approvers are using the ServiceNow Mobile app, and Advanced Approval push notifications is set as a push notification channel in their notification preferences.
- Approval Reminder
- Approval Reminder notifications are sent to approvers automatically when the Send auto reminders and Reminder schedule features are set in the approval configuration by your
approval rule admin. Each reminder is a separate email and is sent at the time specified in the reminder schedule, which is triggered by a scheduled job.
The system generates the first reminder, subsequent reminders, and a final reminder that could lead to escalation, if the escalation feature is set for the approval configuration. For details on setting approval reminders, see Create an approval configuration.
- Approval Request for Overrides
- With overrides, an approval admin for the ServiceNowAI platform who also has the requester role can approve or reject an approval request on behalf of other approvers. For example, the approval admin might need to unblock an
approval step when the step is no longer needed. The approval admin uses the Override option in the step card in the approval workflow interface.
When an override occurs, original approvers receive a notification stating that their action is no longer required because the approval was overridden. For more information on overrides, see Override an approver.
- Notify approval request approvers
- When a requester recalls an approval request, the Notify approval request notification informs approvers that the approval request has been recalled.
- Notify approval request requester
- When changes in the state of an approval request occur, the Notify approval request notification informs requesters when the state changes to approved, rejected, or recalled.
Notification prerequisites
- As an admin, do the following:
- Enable the email sending (Outbound Email Configuration) and email receiving (Inbound Email Configuration) properties. For information on setting these properties, see Email properties.
- Consider reviewing the default notifications for Advanced Approval Management by navigating to and filter the list by Advanced Approval Management.
For example, if you want to control conditions for sending a notification, review the conditions in the When to send related list for a notification. If you want to change content in a notification, review the associated email template for the notification. To learn more, see Email and SMS notifications.
- As approvers and requesters, verify that you’re receiving the default system notifications in the Advanced Approvals notification category and that the notifications are being delivered using your preferred channels.
For example, if you're an approver and you want Advanced Approval Request notifications to be delivered as push notifications on the Now® Mobile application, verify that push notifications are set up as a channel preference for the Advanced Approval Request notification.
To learn more about managing notification categories and setting notification preferences and channels, see Exploring preferences.