Approval process workflow

The lifespan of an approval process includes the following general stages.

1.	You create the approval process, either as a stand-alone approval or as an approval task in a workflow.

2.	Add the items to be approved.

3.	Add approvers.

You can add as many approvers as you need.

You specify whether each approver acts in parallel with other approvers or before or after any other approver by specifying a sequence number.

You specify approvers as required or optional.

You can create individual instructions for each approver.

If you are adding an approval workflow task, you may need to select project roles for the approvers, for example legal approver and subject approver.

4.	Submit the approval.

5.	The system immediately notifies all the approvers with the sequence number of "1."

No other required approver can respond to the approval yet; they must wait their turn, which is based on the sequence order you specified when creating the approval. However, optional approvers can respond at any time; optional approvers are not tied to the established approver order.

6.	Approvers respond to the approval. Depending on how IBM® Unica® Marketing Operations is configured, the approver may also be able to place comments in approval items.

7.	Approvers assess each item attached to the approval and then post their completed response.

8.	The system notifies the next approver, based on the sequence numbers set in the approval.

Several things to note about approval processes.

The approval owner can cancel the approval process at any time in the process.

Approvers provide a separate opinion about each item in the approval: approve, approve with changes, or deny. They then post the entire response.

Marketing Operations organizes approvals in views. When you click Operations > Approvals, by default the My Active Approvals view appears. This list shows only approvals that are active and you are a member of (as either an owner or approver).

You can click the Actions icon (

) and select All Approvals, All My Team's Unassigned Approvals, or All My Team's Approvals.

In any view, you can change the sort order by clicking the column you want to sort by. Click the column a second time to reverse the sort order.

If an approval is linked to a task in the workflow, then the system considers the Schedule Through setting for the task in addition to the system-wide setting for non-work days.

Approvals do not appear on the approval list of required approvers until it is their turn to respond, at which time they receive a notification.

To submit an approval for review

About modifying approvals

To cancel an approval process

To copy an approval

To delete an approval

To complete an approval

To put an approval on hold

To reactivate an approval that is on hold