My approvals
The My Approvals page allows the user to view all approvals, either in progress or completed, for which they are the approver, a consult, or provisioner for. These include approvals that the logged in user is directly responsible for, or are assigned to a group/role that the user is a member of, and all types of tasks appear in one single, combined table. The three types of tasks are described below:
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Approver - User is responsible for approving or rejecting the items of access within the request.
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Consult - The approver for the task has asked the current user to assist in the approval process by providing commentary, insight, or an upload to the approval task.
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Provisioner - User is assigned the responsibility of manually provisioning the access listed within the request, and once completed, must attest to the provisioning (or non provisioning if deemed necessary) of the item(s).
My Approval Tables
The approvals table includes the following columns:
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Requester - user who submitted the request
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Requestee - user for whom the access is requested
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Approver - user or group to whom the task is assigned
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Due Date - date the approval should be completed by
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Item(s) - items that are included as part of the request
Table Filters
The requests table can be filtered using any of the following options:
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Status:
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In Progress - Shows all in-flight tasks that are still waiting to be completed
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Complete - All previously completed approval tasks that have been directly completed by the current user
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Requester: Select a user using the typeahead input box above the column label to display only requests where they are the requester.
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Requestee: Select a user using the typeahead input box above the column label to display only requests where they are the requestee.
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Approver: Select a user or group using the typeahead input box above the column label to display only requests where they are the approver.
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Item: Select a requestable item using the typeahead input box above the column label to display only requests targeting a specific item.
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Due Date: Not specifically a filter, however the current list of results within the table can be sorted by request date, either ascending or descending, by clicking on the column label “Request Date.”
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Table Pagination: The requests table allows the user to choose the amount of rows they would like to see within the page of results (10, 20, or 30.) The user has the ability to scroll through subsequent pages of request results by clicking the navigation arrows to move forward or backward.
Approval Information
Clicking on an individual approval will open an extended panel showing the entire approval contents, grouped by item within the request.
The expanded view of an approval task shows a list of all of the items that are included as part of the task. Each line includes the following information:
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Item - The display name of the item
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Info Icon - Get more information on the requested item. Hovering over this icon will expand a page containing all displayable metadata for the item.
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Remove Icon - Any requested item that was requested to be removed will have a small, red minus icon next to its info icon.
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Action Buttons - The current approval choices available to the approver, or when complete, the choice that was previously made.
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Approve - Approves the request of the individual item.
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Reject - Reject the request of the individual item.
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Provisioned - For a provisioning task, select to attest that the item has been manually provisioned as expected.
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Not Provisioned - For a provisioning task, select to attest that the item has NOT been manually provisioned as expected. This can be used if there is a reason the provisioner has decided to not provision the access, or has determined that it should not be provisioned.
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Comment Icon - Clicking this icon allows the user to add a comment to the given item’s history.
Request Item History
In addition to the information presented initially, each individual request item can be clicked and expanded to reveal a chronological history of the actions taken as part of that item’s approval process. This includes comments made, approval task information, reassign or consult actions, file uploads, and more. This can provide the approver with more insight as to why the item was requested, whether it should be approved, who has approved the item previously, and more.
The history view is organized as a table that includes the following columns:
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User - The user who took the specified action on the item. In the event that the system acts directly on the request, for example during a task expiration, this column will read “SYSTEM.”
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Action - The action taken on the request. Possible values are listed below
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Pending - An in progress approval task awaiting action
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Approved - A completed approval task that was manually approved
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Rejected - A completed approval task that was manually rejected
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Auto-approved - A completed approval task that was auto-approved
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Auto-provisioned - Indicator that item required no approval
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Cancelled - A completed approval task that was cancelled in-progress
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Comment - A generic comment referencing the item
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Consult - Indicator that a consult was added to an approval task
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File - Information on an uploaded file
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Reassign - Information on a reassigned task
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Date - The date and time the action took place
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Content - The content of the action, which will vary depending on the specific action, but will always provide additional details as to what took place. Note that entries into this table for approval task completion may or may not have additional content to display.
| Any approval task that is currently pending/in-progress for the given item will always appear at the top of the item’s history and will be listed as pending. |
Approval Action Buttons
Approvers/consults/provisioners also have access to take certain actions on individual requests via the row of action buttons found at the bottom of the expanded view. Each action is detailed below:
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Reassign - When enabled by administrators, approvers have the ability to reassign an approval task to another user or group.
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Consult - Approvers have the ability to reach out to another user or group and assign them as a “consult” user to the current task. The user or group that is added to the task will be able to view the approval task within their own queue of approvals, but will only have the ability to comment on individual items or attach a file to the request. The approver has the ability to change the current user or group that is assigned as a consult, but only one consult is allowed to be assigned at one time.
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Attachments - Allows the user to view the current list of attachments assigned to this request, download any of those files, or upload a new file.
If there are any files attached to the request, the files table will appear at the top of the page. This table consists of three columns:
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Filename - Name of the uploaded file
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File Owner - User who uploaded the file to the request
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Action Buttons
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Download Icon - Click to download the file to your local machine
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Delete Icon - Click to remove the file from the request
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At the bottom of the page will be the upload file form for adding files to the request. To choose the file you want to upload, click on the Select File button to open up a file picker screen. Once you’ve selected the file, the name of the file chosen will appear next to the Select File button in the form. Finally, clicking on the Upload button to the right will complete the action and save the file to the request.
| For requests with multiple items, it is possible to “attach” a file to only certain items within the request, so that the file is only visible to those approvers who need to see its contents, and not available to approvers who may not be responsible for that specific item. In these cases there will be an extra input as part of the upload form, that allows the uploader to select the items that the file is relevant to. |
Completing an Approval
In order to complete an approval task and remove it from the queue, the approver must make a decision on all items within the task. Approval tasks cannot be submitted unless each item within the task has been acted on.
It is possible for administrators to require that a comment be made when the approver makes certain approval decisions, approve, reject, or both. When that requirement is enforced, clicking on the button for the given decision will cause a page to pop up for the approver to enter in a comment to justify their decision. This comment will be submitted once the approver submits the task, and will not appear in the request item history until after that happens. To adjust the comment before submission, the approver can simply re-select their decision on the item and re-enter the comment.
Once all items have been acted on, the submit button will be enabled, and clicking it will remove the task from the list.
Completed Approval Tasks
Clicking on the ‘Complete’ status button at the top right of the table will change the contents of the table to tasks that have previously been completed by the logged in user. Note that in this view, all user actions are disabled on the approval tasks. The action button taken by the approver will be highlighted for each item in the task, and the row of action buttons at the bottom of the task will not be present.