High-Level Overview

The following high-level overview outlines the Batch Approvals process flow, including setting up forms for Batch Approval (Administrators), submitting requests for approval (Employees), and batch approving or rejecting requests (Supervisors):



Configuring a Form to be Batch Approvable

When you design a form in the Form Builder, you specify the fields to be displayed to the users who have access to the form. Similarly, you can specify the forms that are to be Batch Approvable, and are displayed on the Batch Approvals screen. See " Group Approvals ".

To mark a form as Batch Approvable, select the Batch Approvable check box on the Form Properties screen. In the following example, the Trade Shift With Self Request form has been set to be Batch Approvable:

Specifying the Field Controls to Appear on the Batch Approvals Screen

Field controls represent the form’s elements that capture the required data. Once you have marked a form as Batch Approvable, you must indicate the field controls that should appear on the Batch Approvals screen when a supervisor views the screen.

You design a form in the Form Builder, and then mark individual fields as Batch Approvable so that they appear on the Batch Approvals screen.

To mark a field as Batch Approvable, select the field and select the Batch Approvable check box in the Property Inspector.

Note:  You must select and save the Preserve Value property for the form’s Label control to mark the form as Batch Approvable.

In the following example, the user opened the Trade Shift With Self Request form in the Form Builder, selected the Date of Trade field, and made that field Batch Approvable:



Batch Approvals screen

If you want a field to appear on the Batch Approvals screen, but not in the form that the employee completes when submitting the request, then make the field hidden and Batch Approvable.

You set the order of the fields on the Batch Approvals screen through the Set Order dialog box. All controls marked as Batch Approvable appear in this box. You can move the controls up and down in the order.

Customizing the Workflow Nodes

You use the Workflow Editor to customize the names of the nodes in a workflow. The names are used to display the response options on the Batch Approvals screen. See " Workflow Editor " for information about using the Workflow Editor.



Group Approvals

The Group Approvals feature of Batch Approvals enables you to route employee requests to multiple employees instead of to a single employee or role.

You use the RoleGroup node in the workflow to send the requests to roles with multiple users (that is, roles set up as Virtual Roles in the WFM system, with multiple users defined in the Security Editor). You can also send requests to a group of specified employees, instead of roles, using the EmployeeGroup node.

The requests appear in each employee’s Inbox and on the Batch Approvals screen. Employees can process the requests by accepting or rejecting the requests.

If two employees view and process the same requests, then the first changes made are accepted. For example, if Supervisor1 and Supervisor2 are viewing EmployeeA’s vacation request, and Supervisor1 accepts the vacation request, then the request is accepted and removed from both supervisors’ lists upon refresh. However, if Supervisor2 has not yet refreshed and tries to reject the request, then Supervisor2 receives a message indicating that another employee has already processed the request.

RoleGroup Node

Use the RoleGroup Node in a workflow to route a batch approvable request to another employee role (for example, the Supervisor or Payroll role). When an employee submits the request, the request is sent to the Inbox and displayed on the Batch Approvals screen of the employee who belongs to the selected role.

Note:  You can only route interactions to one employee role at a time.

The RoleGroup Node has the following properties:

  • Name - Name assigned to the icon. The name is displayed directly underneath the icon in the workspace. The name assigned should be relevant to the node purpose.
  • Description - Brief description of the node.
  • Image Icon - The *.GIF image that represents the Role icon.
  • Role - Specifies which organization roles are responsible for processing the form when the form arrives at the node. In the Role Editor window, select the roles to which you want to route the form. Every user assigned to the selected roles receives the form.

EmployeeGroup Node

Use the EmployeeGroup Node in a workflow to route a batch approvable request to multiple employees (for example, a list of people at a specific office location). When an employee submits the request, the request is sent to the Inbox and Batch Approvals screen of all the selected employees.

The EmployeeGroup Node has the following properties:

  • Name - Name assigned to the icon. The name is displayed directly underneath the icon in the workspace. The name assigned should be relevant to the node purpose.
  • Description - Brief description of the node.
  • Image Icon - The *.GIF image that represents the Role icon.
  • Employee - Specifies which employees are responsible for processing the form when the form arrives at the node. In the Employee Editor window, select the employees to which you want to route the form.