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Need Approval Process for each department?

Hello to all:

I am having trouble understanding how the Department Approvals work.  It takes sooooo long to set them up but I'm assuming I'm doing it wrong.

In my mind, I could set up a department approval for a particular type of ticket, like New Hire, and that approval would see the department chosen for the ticket and would send the approval to the appropriate person.  I would like to think it should work this way but I can't figure that out.  To make it work here, then, I have been creating approval process for each department for each type of ticket (what a chore!).

So let me run through my set up so you can understand what I've been doing and then, if there is in fact an easier way, you can clue me in....

I created Department Approver Roles (one for each department).  Then, under Department Approvers, I created an entry for each department and assigned it an approver role (Marketing would be the department and I assigned a Marketing Manager as the Approver Role for example).  Then, to complete the setup, I created an Approval Process for each department.  To make it work, I have action rules (one for each department...AGAIN).  They all are monitoring ticket changes and when they find a request type of "New Hire" and see their department, they attach the approval process to the ticket for that department. 

This is frustrating because I have created each department (more than ten of them) for approver roles, department approvers, approval processes, and then still had to create an action rule for each.  That was all done for the "New Hire" process.  Now I need to create this same type of setup for an access request for a particular software application our clients are using.  Do I really have to set up all ten or so departments four or five times?  Ugh.

I'd like to think that you could have a list of approvers, in one group somewhere and tell the ticket to assign that SINGLE approval process and then, that one process, would see the department chosen in the ticket and would assign the appropriate approval process.  Please tell me there is a way to do this.

I know, under Department Approvers, you can add more than one Approver Role but I'm assuming that's if you wanted to assign more than one person per department so that won't help.  On the approval process, if I changed one of my processes from "Marketing" to "New Hire", I know that under approval steps I can add multiple steps.  I tried that first, and added a step for each department, but when the ticket tried to update, I got an error message stating, I think, that the approval didn't match the department or maybe it said the department couldn't be found.  Sorry, I can't remember specifically what that message was - that was last week when I tested that way.

Any information you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Magus

  • FormerMember
    0 FormerMember

    I'm interested in this also, as I know there's a feature request for dynamic approvals (or approvals through the tech portal) that should help significantly.

    What I did was setup an action rule & approval for each dept. with criteria that include whatever ticket types require approvals. Still doesn't work all the way because the same request type may need a different approval.

  • From what I can gather the way you want it to work is already built in. I THINK this is what you were looking for, but I could be misunderstanding.

    -Create an Approver Role (for example, Department Manager)

    -Under Department Approvers, you have a list of all your departments and you assign an Approver Role to each department; when you assign the role to the department, you will be able to select which user you want to be in that role

    -Create an Approval Process (for example, Manager Approval); under Approval Steps, select Department Approver and populate the drop down with your Approver Role

    Now, when you go to your Tickets/Request Types and select whatever request type you have built out (for example, New Hire), under approval process, you select aforementioned process you created (Manager Approval)

    New Hire ticket submitted by the marketing department would go to the marketing manager for approvals.

    It should then all route the way you have described, based on who you determine to be your Department Approver, it will go to them for approval.

    -----------------------------

    The problem I am having is we have a deparment where there is more than one "Manager" that can approve tickets, and I can't figure out how to get that working correctly to where they both get notified for a new ticket pending approval and as long as one of them approves it, its good to go.

  • Thanks for the information!

    I will test as soon as possible and see that works but from what you’ve described, it’s exactly what I’m trying to do.

    Funny thing is we may be reworking the whole process anyway so this is good to know now.

    Our current setup is that HR creates a New Hire ticket including custom fields (legal name, employee number, and job title). When the ticket gets to us, in IT, we change the status of the ticket to a custom type we named “propel” which then unhides more custom fields (check boxes for programs the employee will need access to, hardward the employee needs access to, etc.). We, then, fill out that portion and the ticket automatically, based on some action rules, applies the approval process which gets routed to the appropriate department. The catch, however, is that we in IT don’t always know what access these employees need. And if a ticket gets denied, the person denying the access puts a note that employee needs additional access (like maybe they need access to a program we in IT didn’t think they would need). The problem then, of course, is that we can’t make the necessary correction and resubmit for approval a second time. If an approval is “pending”, you can change the status type to “open”, or any other type, and the approval process drops off. Then, you can make changes and apply the approval process again. If it’s denied, however, you have no way of removing the approval process to resubmit.

    I think we’re going to come up with a new system where the users from each department submit their own tickets so they can correctly populate the access areas the first time without us in IT having the guess at it. That simple method should have been the first, and most obvious method for our needs and to confirm your thinking – it was. We were initially going to set the system up that way but decided to have the tickets come from HR so we could be sure to get the new hire’s legal name.

    Oh well, back to the drawing board. But, at least if I need to set up another approval process, I’ll know how to do it.

    Thanks again for the help!

  • Your method worked and was exactly what I was looking for.

    However, we’re still opting to go another route for new hires but to now understand this process is really helpful.

    Appreciate the information!

    Thanks,

    Magus