Advanced Approval Management release notes
Summarize
Summary of Advanced Approval Management release notes
The ServiceNow® Advanced Approval Management application, introduced in the Australia release, empowers organizations to create and automate approval workflows specifically for Sales Customer Relationship Management (CRM) entities such as customer quotes. This application enhances approval efficiency by defining clear approvers, automating routing, and enabling flexible management of approval steps.
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Key Features
- Flexible approval configurations: Design workflows with sequential, parallel, or mixed approval steps, defining approvers by roles, groups, or conditions. Consolidated email notifications allow approvers to accept or reject requests directly from a single email, simplifying the approval process.
- Intelligent routing and smart reapprovals: Set conditions like discount percentage or deal size to automatically trigger approvals or skip already approved steps if no changes occurred.
- Escalations: Automatically reassign pending approvals to alternate approvers if the original approver does not act within a specified timeframe, preventing delays.
- Override approval steps: Admins with appropriate roles can bypass or override pending approval steps when they are no longer necessary, unblocking the workflow.
- Automated notifications: Notify sales agents and approvers of approval status changes, escalations, and overrides through predefined system emails, keeping all parties informed and on track.
- Flexible submission and ad-hoc approvers: Requesters can preview required approvals before submission, recall and resubmit requests, and add extra approvers or groups during active approval cycles to address special expertise needs.
- Real-time status tracking and approval history: Monitor detailed progress and audit trails for each approval step, including timestamps, comments, and assigned approvers.
- Multi-channel approval management: Approvers can accept or reject requests via email, push notifications, configurable workspaces, or approval centers such as My Approvals in the ServiceNow AI Platform. Backup approvers can be assigned with specific coverage periods for continuity.
Activation and Related Applications
Advanced Approval Management is available for installation via the ServiceNow Store. Customers must request the application from the store to activate it.
This application integrates with the Quote Management application, which allows sales teams to create and manage customer quotes that can be submitted for approval using workflows defined in Advanced Approval Management.
The ServiceNow® Advanced Approval Management application enables you to define workflows for approving Sales Customer Relationship Management entities, such as customer quotes. Advanced Approval Management is a new application in the Australia release.
Advanced Approval Management highlights for the Australia release
- Create approval workflows that specify appropriate approvers and define the approval steps within a workflow.
- Automate the approval workflow by setting conditions that automatically trigger the approval process and route approvals to designated approvers.
- Prevent approval delays by automatically reassigning pending approvals when the original approver does not act within a set timeframe.
- Enable approval rule admins or approval rule writers to override an approval step when an approval is no longer required.
- Enable approvers or approval request writers to add relevant approvers during an active approval cycle without modifying existing approval rules.
- Keep requesters informed and approvers on track by using automated email notifications for approval status changes, escalations, overrides, and ad hoc approvals.
See Advanced Approval Management for more information.
Advanced Approval Management features
- Flexible approval configurations
- Build workflows that enable sequential approvals, parallel (simultaneous) approvals, or a combination of both.
- Define workflow approval steps and optional chains that progress through multiple approval levels based on rule evaluations.
- Set the approval order using combinations of levels, roles, and conditions.
- Define approval users and groups.
- Consolidate multiple email notifications on an approval request for an approver so that the approver receives a single email notification.
- Intelligent routing rules and smart reapprovals
- Automatically trigger approvals by setting conditions based on items such as discount percentage, deal size, and margin thresholds. Configure thresholds and conditions so the approval workflow skips approved steps that have already been approved if the underlying conditions haven't changed.
- Escalations
- Enable approval rule admins to escalate an approval request by reassigning a pending approval request to another approver automatically when the original approver does not act within a specified time.
- Override an approval step
- As an approval rule writer who also has the approval admin role, override or bypass a pending approval request step to unblock an approval request when the approval is no longer required.
- Automated notifications of approval status
- Inform sales agents and approvers of the status of approval items moving through the approval workflow by setting up notifications. Use predefined system notifications for reminders and escalations.
- Flexible submission for approval requests
- Before submitting requests for approval, see the required approvals, approver names, approval reasons, and approval sequencing by creating and previewing approval requests. Requesters can recall approval requests for changes and resubmit them.
- Ad-hoc approvers
- As a requester or an approver, add one or more approvers or approval groups to an approval request, outside of the predefined approvers for a given rule. Enables approval users to add approvers who have more expertise on certain aspects of the request, for example if there are legal or regulatory issues relevant to the request.
- Real-time status tracking and approval history
- Monitor approval progress and access an audit trail with detailed status for each approval step including assigned approvers, actual approvers (for completed steps), approval comments, and assignment and completion timestamps.
- Approval management
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- Accept or reject approvals using multiple channels, such as email, push notifications, the CSM Configurable Workspace, or approval centers, such as My Approvals in the ServiceNow AI Platform®.
- Assign backup approvers with date-specific coverage periods for seamless continuity of the approval process.
Activation information
Install Advanced Approval Management by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store to view all the available apps, and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.
Plugin information
- New plugins
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The following plugin is new in Australia:
Advanced Approval Management (com.sn_adv_appr_mgmt): Create workflows for approving entities such as customer quotes submitted by sales agents.