Approvals

Examples of approvals on other entities include:

• allow Business Cases and other documents to be approved on-line;
• allow a formal Stage Gate process to be followed including single or multiple approvals by review committee members;
• allow project Sponsors and Owners to approve Scope Changes by simply clicking the Approved icon on their Home Pages.

Using approvals

Approvals can be created on any item on PPO. Approval records are added based on a trigger or event within PPO, such as when a document is added, a project is added or a scope change is added. When the item is added, it automatically inherits the required approvals for the item. Based on the client's requirements, a single approval or multiple approvals can be added which need to be approved either in sequence or in parallel. 

Once approval is required on the item, the user can access the necessary approval record and submit it for approval. 

When the approval is submitted, the approval status will change from Pending to Ready and will now appear on the approver's Home Page. The approver will also be notified via e-mail that an item requires their approval. 

The approver can access the approval record from the link in the notification e-mail, or by logging into PPO and accessing the approval record from their Home Page.

 

The approver will then be able to view the details of the submitted item and will have the option to Approve or Decline the item.
The originator then has the opportunity to rework the item, based on the approver's comments. Once ready, the originator can access the approval record and resubmit the item for approval. The approver will be notified again and can re-evaluate the item.

Various actions can occur once the first approver approves an item. If multiple approvals are required in sequence, the next approval record will automatically be marked as Ready and will appear on the next approver's Home Page. 

If no other approvals are required or if all required approvals have been approved, the related item's status can be updated to "Approved", or the project's phase can be moved to the next phase, based on the requirement and rules supplied. 

In order for the approvals process to function properly, several validation rules are set up in conjunction with the approvals. These validation rules include: 

1. The item cannot be edited while waiting for approval (i.e. while an approval status is "Ready") - This ensures that the item submitted for approval is the same item viewed by the approver and that no changes have been made between the time the item was submitted and the time the item is reviewed.
2. The item cannot be edited after it has been approved - This ensures that the approved item is not altered after approval. This rule may not be required in the case of stage gate approvals, where the project is moved to the next phase but the project can still be edited until the project ends.
3. Approvals must be submitted in sequence - This rule will not be applicable if there is only one approval required or if approvals can be approved in parallel, but is specifically applicable to stage gate approvals. This rule ensures that approvals are submitted in the correct order (i.e. that the execution phase is not approved before the initiation phase).

When setting up approvals, the PPO Support Team will deploy the above validation rules as required. 

There are two user group settings associated with approvals. 

• Approve for Others

This setting allows users to access the home pages of approvers and approve items on the approvers' behalf. This is useful for situations where an approver is on extended leave or unable to access the system due to time constraints, but they authorise an administrator to mark the item as approved or declined on their behalf in order for work to continue. 

• Administer Approvals

The administer approvals function allows PPO Administrators to override or correct approvals without going through the normal approvals process. Care should be taken when awarding this functionality to users as it will allow them to add, edit and delete approvals.

When a user has access to administer approvals, they will see the Approvals entity from the quick page locator list:

When access the approvals from the quick page locator, the user is taken to an approvals list page. 

 From here the user can drill through to an approval and will see the following action icons:

These action icons allow the administrator to delete the approval, edit the approval, add a new approval, view the approvals list or see the related item.

We strongly recommend that users NOT add approvals manually, but rather contact the PPO Support Team for assistance on setting up an automated approvals process.

The administer for approvals function should only be used in exception cases when a correction is required.