Workflows & examples
Common tasks
1. Clear your approval queue
- Open Approvals → My Tasks each morning.
- Sort by SLA timer to handle the most urgent first.
- Approve to advance each request, reject with a reason, or send it back for revision; the source document updates automatically.
2. Configure a multi-step approval chain for a request type
- Go to Approvals → Settings → Request Types and pick a generic type (or create one).
- Add steps in order — manager, role, specific person, or a panel — and add a threshold condition to any step that shouldn’t always run.
- Save. Requests of that type submitted afterward follow the new chain; built-in types fork a company copy automatically.
3. Submit a request and track it through a chain
- From Self-Service → Requests, pick a request type and fill in the form.
- Submit — the request enters its chain and appears in Approvals → Sent (or on your Self-Service dashboard).
- Watch it move step by step; you’re notified on approval, send-back, or rejection.
4. Approve or reject a request in your inbox
- Open Approvals → My Tasks and click the request.
- Review the document, any prior comments, and where it sits in the chain.
- Approve to move it forward, reject with a required reason, or send it back for the requester to fix.
5. Settle expenses from a business trip
- Submit and get approval for a Business trip request; optionally pre-approve the estimated spend.
- Request a Cash advance for the trip, linked to it.
- After travel, submit a Payment / reimbursement claim as an advance settlement, with itemized line items and receipts.
- Once approved, it materializes into a paid-ready Expense — no second approval — with the whole trip traceable end to end.
6. Cover approvals while you’re away
- Before leave, go to Approvals → Settings and delegate to a backup for the date range.
- Incoming requests route to your delegate automatically.
- SLA escalation and the Approvals Steward catch anything that still slips.
A worked example — a purchase order over the threshold
Submit
The buyer sends a 2 billion ₫ purchase order for approval. The Procurement module raises it and hands the workflow engine a payload: total, vendor, category, requester.
Routing
The engine walks the template’s steps in order and evaluates each condition against that payload. A step whose condition is true dispatches to its approvers; a step whose condition is false is skipped and recorded as skipped — the trail shows why.
The step lands in someone’s queue
It appears in My approvals for whoever the step resolves to: a named person, a role, the submitter’s manager, or a department. They can approve, reject, or request changes.
If nobody can act
A step that resolves to zero approvers — the role is empty, the submitter has no manager, the named person left — does not sit silently pending. It is written to the audit trail as unstaffed and appears in the parked queue for an administrator, with what to fix.
This matters because the alternative is worse: a document that waits forever, on nobody’s screen, with no error.
Escalation and delegation
An overdue step escalates according to /approvals/settings/escalation. A delegation rule can route a person’s approvals to a colleague for a period — set up by the delegator, not by the person receiving them.
Approved
The engine emits the outcome and the source module reacts: the purchase order moves to approved and becomes issuable. The status change is the module’s job, not the approval’s — which is why an approval can be recorded as approved while the document briefly still shows the old status.
Data in and out
Comes from
| Source | What is submitted |
|---|---|
| Finance | Invoices, bills, expenses, credit notes |
| Procurement | Requisitions, purchase orders, vendor returns |
| HR | Leave, overtime, timesheets, payroll adjustments |
| Sales | Quotations and discounts above threshold |
| Contracts | Contracts, amendments, legal reviews |
| Projects | Time logs, expenses, change requests |
Goes to
| Destination | What leaves |
|---|---|
| The originating module | The decision, which drives the document’s own status change |
| Notifications | In-app, email and push to the current approver |
| Reports | Cycle time, approval rate, bottlenecks |
| Audit trail | Every decision, every skip, every escalation |