Approvals

Approvals are decisions someone has to make before work can go ahead: sign-off on a document, a work item, or a request that came in through a form. The Approvals page shows the decisions waiting on you and the ones you asked for, lets you approve or reject them with a comment, and keeps a permanent record of who decided what.

Where to find it#

Open Approvals from the sidebar. There are three tabs:

• Single approver: requests with one named approver.
• Multi-approver: requests routed to several people with a rule for how many must agree.
• Delegations: handing your approvals to someone else while you are away (see Approval delegation).

Pending approvals that need you also appear in your Inbox, and you get a notification when one is assigned to you.

Key concepts#

Approval request

A question about one record, such as a work item, a document or a request, put to one or more approvers.

Requester

The person, or the author of the automation, who asked for the approval.

Approver

A person who can decide. On multi-approver requests each approver has their own step.

Routing

Parallel: everyone can decide at once. Sequential: approvers decide one at a time, in order.

Rule

How many approvals are needed: all, any one, at least N, or a percentage.

Who can use it#

Decide a single-approver request#

Single-approver requests are usually raised for you by an automation (the “request approval” action) or another part of UnitX. Each row shows what needs approving, with a link when it is a work item, a document or an intake request, then who asked, who must decide, when it was requested, and a status badge.

1. Find the request

   The list opens filtered to Pending. Use the status filter to show All statuses, Approved, Rejected or Cancelled instead.

2. Add a comment (optional)

   Type in Comment (optional). The requester sees it with your decision.

3. Approve or reject

   Select Approve or Reject. The request is closed and the requester is notified. A decision can’t be changed afterwards.

The decision buttons only appear if you are the approver, or you hold an active delegation from them. In that case the row says “(you can decide this as their delegate)”.

Multi-approver requests#

Create a request#

1. Open the dialog

   On the Multi-approver tab, select New request. You need approval.manage.

2. Choose what needs approving

   Under What needs approving, pick Work item or Document. For a work item, choose the Project first, then the Work item. For a document, choose the document.

3. Choose routing and rule

   Set Routing to Parallel — everyone at once or Sequential — one at a time. Set Rule to All must approve, Any one approves, At least N (enter Minimum approvals) or Percentage (enter a Percentage threshold from 1 to 100).

4. Choose the approvers

   Under Approvers from, pick:

   • Specific people: tick each person.
   • A person’s manager: choose whose manager. The manager comes from the employee record, and the request fails if that person has no manager.
   • Everyone with a role: choose a role. It must have at least one active member.
   • A team: choose a team. It must have at least one member.

5. Add context and a deadline

   Optionally add a Comment (optional) and a Due (optional) date and time. The due date is a plain calendar deadline, not working hours.

6. Create it

   Select Create request. Each approver gets their own step.

Decide a multi-approver request#

1. Expand the request

   Select the request to see each approver’s step and decision. On sequential requests the steps are numbered in order. A decision made by a delegate shows “(decided by …)”.

2. Record your decision

   Optionally add a comment, then select Approve, Reject or Request changes. If it isn’t your turn on a sequential request, or you aren’t an approver, UnitX tells you so.

The request resolves as soon as its rule can be decided either way. Any steps still waiting are then marked skipped, and the requester is notified.

Overdue requests#

Due dates aren’t checked automatically. Someone with approval.manage selects Check overdue on the Multi-approver tab. Every pending request past its due date is escalated once: it gets an Escalated badge, and the requester’s manager, or the requester if they have no manager, is notified.

Cancel a request#

Only the person who asked for an approval can cancel it, and only while it is pending. You also need approval.manage. Select Cancel on a single-approver row, or expand a multi-approver request and select Cancel. Cancelled requests stay in the list under the Cancelled filter.

Statuses#

On a multi-approver request each step is pending, approved, rejected, changes requested or skipped. The status filter doesn’t offer Changes requested, so choose All statuses to find those.

Where approvals come from#

• Automations can raise a single-approver request (“request approval”) or a multi-approver approval on an intake request (“request approval for request”).
• Requests show an approval badge, such as “Awaiting approval”, linking here.
• Workflow steps can be blocked until an approval comes through.
• You can raise multi-approver requests for work items and documents yourself, as described above.

Troubleshooting#

Related pages#

• Approval delegation
• Automations
• Requests
• Inbox