Assigning Approvers

When you create an approval, you add the people who must offer feedback. Approvers can be required or optional. After they are added, Marketing Operations informs approvers of the status and changes to the approval process.

About this task

When you make assign approvers, consider the following functions.

  • You can assign as many approvers as you need.
  • The sequence number that you assign specifies the order in which approvers work and whether any of them work in parallel.
  • You specify approvers as required or optional.
  • If you are adding an approval workflow task, you might select project roles for the approvers: for example, legal approver and subject approver.

Procedure

  1. Create or open an approval process.
  2. In the Approvers section, click the Add Approvers link.
  3. In the Select Member Access Levels window, approvers are organized in folders by role. Expand the appropriate folder, select the approver, and click >> to add the person to the Selected Reviewers column. You can use Ctrl-click to add several approvers at the same time.
    When you finish selecting approvers, click Save.
  4. Click the clock Figure shows clock icon to specify the duration of the review for each approver. The default duration is one day.
  5. Specify each approver's place in the sequence. Enter integer values in the field for each approver.
    • By default, approver sequence is based on the order in which you add the approvers to the approval process.
    • Use the sequence numbers to specify the order in which approvers act, and whether some approvers act in parallel or in sequence.
    • Assigning the same number to more than one approver means that these approvers act in parallel, and can respond to the approval simultaneously.
    • When a user revisits the approval, approvers are listed by their sequence number, rather than the order they were added to the approval.
  6. Set at least one approver as Required.

    Although a user can save the approval with all optional approvers, such an approval process cannot be started. If someone tries to start an approval that does not contain a required approver, Marketing Operations generates a warning message.

    • By default, all approvers are Required.
    • If an approver is required, the next approver in sequence is not notified and cannot respond until the current, required approver responds.
    • If an approver is required, and that approver denies the approval, then the next sequential approver is not notified. Instead, the approval is placed on hold and the owners are notified.
    • If you have multiple simultaneous approvers and one required approver rejects the approval, the system notifies the approval owner. The approval process continues until all simultaneous required approvers respond. However, the approval process status changes to on-hold and approvers later in the sequence cannot respond.
  7. Optionally, you can add individualized instructions for each reviewer. The instructions field is not available for stand-alone approvals.
  8. When you finish adding approvers, click Save Changes.
    Note: If you click Cancel, you are canceling the whole approval process, not just the approvers section. You lose unsaved work elsewhere in the approval if you click Cancel.