Adaco: Approval Groups

Overview

Within Adaco (formerly Purchasing & Inventory) there is the ability to route requisitions, recipes, products, projects, quotations or invoices to an Approval Group rather than to an individual user. This allows for one person within the group to approve or reject as part of a standard approval route. This article shows how Approval Groups are created, configured, and used with the system.

Configuring Approval Groups

• To view any existing Approval Groups, follow the path Property Setup > User Groups > Approval Groups
• To edit an Approval Group, either double-click one or highlight and press Details
• To create a new Approval Group, select New
• To remove an existing one, use the Delete button

Please note - an Approval Group cannot be deleted if it is part of any Route.

Fig.1 - Approval Groups

See the table below for a list and description of all fields and settings when creating or editing an Approval Group - also shown in Fig.2.

Fig.2 – Approval Groups edit screen

• To add a user to the Approval Group, select Add

Please note: If attempting to add or delete a user for an existing approval group that is currently in an active or pending route, the Add and Delete buttons will be disabled.

A search form is provided for easier filtering of users by:

• Full Name
• Title
• User Group

See Fig.3.

Fig.3 – User search screen

Adding Newly Created Users to Existing Groups

When adding a user to the system (on the Add User screen), there is a tab for Approval Groups where users can be assigned to Approval Groups in the same way that they are assigned to User Groups - see Fig.4.

Fig.4 – User Edit screen

Please note: Before deleting a user, they should not be a participant in any Approval Group.

Adding an Approval Group to a Route

• Go to Property > Setup > Routes

When creating a Route, groups can be added and removed in the same way that users are.

• Make a selection from the list of available Routes, and use the Add/Remove buttons as required
• Save once complete

This means that pending requisitions, invoices, etc. will show for each user in the group, as well as them receiving either the approval email or push notification in the Fourth app.

If there are no users added to an Approval Group, the Approval Group will not be listed.

Fig.5 – Route Builder screen

Within the Route Builder screen, an extra column is provided - 'Min Users' - editable only for Approval Groups, where a minimum number of users that should complete a specific action can be entered. If the number is greater than the number of users in the Approval Group, an error message will display after Save is selected – see Fig.6
 

Fig.6 – Error message when minimum users criteria not met

For Final Approve, only 1 user is required to complete the action (as it is currently with the user flow).

The highest action that a user from an Approval Group can complete is taken from the Approval Group setup. An Approval Limit will be taken from the Approval Group and not individual users.

When a document is submitted for Approval and the next step in the route is for an Approval Group, every user within the group will receive an email notification to advise that they need to action a document.

Whenever the minimal required threshold of users for completing an action for a document is reached, the remaining participants in the Approval Group will receive an email notification that no further actions are required at this stage.

If even one user from an Approval Group does Final Approval, the document approval will be complete and the other users will be notified.

Limitations:

An Approval Group action can be re-routed to another user. However, a user or Approval Group action cannot be re-routed to an Approval Group.