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Approval Flow Configuration

Tutorial Video

Configuring the Approval Process

You may configure the Approval process for your database sheets in Ragic for all users in your account.

Configure the approval flow of a form by going to Design Mode. You will see the icon in the lower right corner.

Hovering on this icon will display a dialogue box where you can configure the approval flow for the form.

This dialogue box can also be opened from the Form Tools menu.

From this box, you can add as many approval steps as you would like.

Set the Approver Title you wish to use for an approval step such as "Purchasing Manager", or "Project Manager". The Name field is where you will input the approver name for each approval step.

You may select an approver name from the Users in your account.

If an approver can be anyone from a certain user group in your account, you have the option to select a user group instead.

If the approver must be a user's direct supervisor, you can choose the option Direct Supervisor under the Company Organization Tree menu.

To set the approver to the user's supervisor's supervisor, you can choose the option Supervisor of Supervisor.

To include the supervisor of the specified user in the previous step of approval flow, you can choose the option Supervisor of Previous Approver.

You can also directly select approvers from Select User or Select Group field. As shown in the image below, for example, you can send an approval request to the corresponding Reviewing Officer (the designated approver in charge) of this record as an alternative to selecting someone from the Procurement Department (group) as an approver.

If you want to set non-users (such as clients and suppliers) as request approvers, you can choose "E-mail" field in the approval flow configuration. The approval request will then be sent to the email address entered in the record's Email field.

You may also rearrange the order of approval using drag and drop.

Please note that you will need to fill in the information in the system sheet User for the system to correctly identify user supervisors. If you can't see the Direct Supervisor field in your User sheet, please contact support@ragic.com for more information about how to update the default system sheets.

After you finish setting up the approval steps, don't forget to Save the changes made in Design Mode.

Add Approvers in This Step

By clicking on the gear icon located just on the right of the approver selection menu, you can add approvers in this step. By doing this, all the approvers in this step must approve this form to proceed to the next approval step.

Set a Threshold for Approval

After adding approvers in a step, you can also set a threshold for approval. For example, if there are three approvers on the first step of a record and you set its threshold for approval as 2, this record will proceed to the next approval step after two users on the first step have approved it.

If you would like all members of one or more groups to approve a record, you would need to set at least two approvers in an approval step, which you can then set its threshold for approval.

For example, if the HR user group has four users and you would like all four users to approve before proceeding to the next step, you can set the HR user group or anyone in the HR user group in the approval step. After that, you’ll be able to see the threshold for approval, which you can then set as 4.

Advanced Settings

Below are some additional settings you can configure for your approval flow:

Strict identity verification: Verify user identification when approval is pending. You may have to set this option to comply with local laws, for example, FDA 21 CFR Part 11.

Allow users to reject approval: Users will be able to reject the approval.

Allow returning to the previous approval step after rejecting: Whether to permit rolling back to the previous step after rejection. When it is not enabled, rejecting will cancel the entire approval process.

Lock record when approval starts: The record will be locked once the approval process starts.

Start approval after saving a new record: The approval process will only start if one record meets all the following criteria:

1. No manual selection of approvers is required in any approval step.

2. Created by internal users.

Approve with handwritten signature: Users will see a handwritten signature window when approving.

Only notify the approval starter when approval is completed: This setting will not affect the users selected in "Notify these users when approval is completed".

Disallow canceling completed approvals: Once configured, "Cancel approval" option is no longer available when approval is completed, and the system will use the authority of last approver to execute the action button, so please make sure the user who approves the last step does have access to execute this action button to make sure it will be auto-executed.

Disallow approval starter from cancelling ongoing approval process: By default, only the approval starter, SYSadmins can cancel the ongoing approval process. If you want to disallow the approval starter from canceling the ongoing approval, please enable this setting. Note: Enabling this setting overrides all access rights settings, including Feature Access Settings. The approval starter cannot cancel the approval in this sheet, whether they are a SYSadmin or part of a group with "Cancel Approval" permission.

No reasons needed

Allow approval to start when no approval steps meet their respective rules: Allow approval to start when no approval steps meet their respective rules and let users to decide whether to regard as approved.

Notify approvers again if no approval actions: When no approvers have completed an approval step in a specified number of days, the system will automatically notify all approvers in this step again.

Notify these users when approval is completed: You can notify any user or user group.

Execute these action buttons after completing approval: The supported action buttons include custom action buttons, apply all formulas, lock record, unlock record, and link & load sync. The system will automatically execute these action buttons no matter if the last approval has the access rights to execute the buttons or not. If action buttons are configured to be executed following the completion of an approval flow, then the approval flow cannot be canceled after it is finished.

Setting up Rules for the Approval Flow

You can create rules to skip approval steps according to the values in

the record. Click Set rules under the Gear Icon.

For example, you can create a rule stating that only orders totaling more than $1000 require sales manager approval.

Otherwise, the approval process will skip that step.

Adding approval related fields

After adding an approval flow on your sheet, you can use the listing page field picker to add approval-related fields on the listing page.

If you add these fields on the listing page, they will be automatically added on the bottom of the form page and set as hidden by default.

Alternatively, you may manually create fields and apply approval formulas to populate approval-related values. For example, if you would like to populate the status of the approval flow, you may create a free text field apply the following formula.

APPROVAL.STATUS()

After saving the sheet’s design, you will need to execute formula recalculation to populate the approval status of existing records.

Note: If you use this formula to populate the status of your approval flow, the system will populate their respective system values, such as “F” means approved and “REJ” means rejected. If you want to convert these system values to text, you may refer to this document.

Using the Approval Flow

The approval steps you have set for the form will show up in all user entries. Once an entry is saved, clicking the Start Approval button will begin the approval process. Only the user who has sufficient access right can start approval for the entry - the SYSAdmin of the database, users with Admin access right to the sheet, or users who are the "entry managers" (the entry creator or users who have been assigned to the entry) with Bulletin User or Survey User access right to the sheet.

You may refer to this guide for further information on how to use the Approval Flow function in Ragic.

Change approvers

To change approvers, SYSAdmins can click the + icon and select Change approvers.

Deputy Approval

You can assign a deputy user for users in your system sheet User so that the deputy has permission to approve or reject approval requests during the user's absence. For detailed information, you may refer to this article.

To maintain approval flow when you are on leave, make sure to tick the Notify Deputy checkbox so that your deputy will receive approval request notifications and Emails to assist with the matter on your behalf. About Personal Settings, please refer to this page.

Please note that you will need to fill in the information in the User system sheet so that the system can identify the deputies for each user. If you can't see the Deputy field in your User sheet, please contact support@ragic.com for more information about how to update the default system sheets.

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