Create an approval process for work items

Keep this option enabled if you want other users to be able to attach the approval process to projects, tasks, and issues that they create.

This option is enabled by default.

Tip: Marking an approval process as inactive is useful when your organization no longer needs to use it, but you want to preserve historical information about its use.

If you want the approval process available for projects, tasks, issues, and templates belonging only to a particular group, start typing the name of the group, then select the name when it appears:

• If you are a system administrator or you have administrative access to approval processes, you can see any group in the system when you type its name. All groups is selected by default.
• If you are a group administrator without administrative access to approval processes, you can assign the approval process to any group you manage when you type its name. The All Groups option is not available.

This option is not available for single-use approval processes.

WARNING: When you make changes to the group-specific approval process, the existing approval processes that have already been associated with work items might change. For information about these changes, see How group and approval process changes affect assigned approval processes.

For information about listing and managing your group's approval processes from your group's page, see Group-level approval processes.

For information about administrative access to approval processes, see Grant users administrative access to certain areas.

Select the status that will trigger the approval process on work items. When someone updates a work item to this status, its approval process begins.

The same status cannot be selected for multiple approval process paths.

The statuses available are based on what is selected under the option This approval can be used by (explained in the table above):

• If All groups is selected, only system-wide statuses are available

• If a specific group is selected, only the statuses available for that group are available

For information about how approval process work with statuses, see the section How approval processes rely on statuses in the article Approval process overview.

Begin typing the name of the user, team, or job role that you want to designate as an approver for this stage, then click the name when it appears in the drop-down list. You can add only active users, job roles, and teams.

TIP:

When adding a user as an approver, notice the avatar, the user's Primary Role, or their email address to distinguish between users with identical names. Users must be associated with at least one job role to view it as you add them.

You must have the View Contact Info setting enabled in your access level for Users to view users' emails. For information, see Grant access to users.

NOTE:

Adding a user, team, or role as an approver does not automatically give them permissions to the object associated with that approval. They receive permissions to the object when the approval step is triggered. Otherwise, the objects must be shared with them before they can make an approval decision.

You can also designate an individual as an approver by specifying the individual’s role. For example, you can assign a Project Owner, Project Sponsor, Portfolio Owner, Program Owner, or Manager as an approver. These options automatically appear when you begin typing.

IMPORTANT:

• When you assign an approval to the Project Sponsor and no one is designated as the sponsor of a project, the approval is reassigned to the Project Owner. If no one is designated as the owner of the project, the approval is assigned to the Workfront administrator.

• When you assign an approval to a role and the Approver not required to be on the project team (for approval processes that include a role) is disabled but there are no roles in the project team that match the role on the approval, the approval is reassigned to the Project Owner. For information about approval settings, see Configure global approval settings.

• When you assign an approval to the Project Owner and no one is designated as the owner of a project, the approval is reassigned to the main Workfront administrator as indicated in the Customer Info section in the Setup area. For information, see Configure basic information for your system.

You can repeat this process to add multiple approvers to the stage. A single stage can include a combination of users, teams, and job roles as approvers. There is no limit to the number of approvers you can add to a stage.

IMPORTANT:

When you assign job roles as approvers, all users associated with that job role that are also on the project team can make a decision on the approval.

When you assign a team as an approver, any user in that team can make a decision on the approval.

For more information about the project team, see Project Team overview. For more information about approving work, see Approving work.

Select this option if any one of the approvers on the stage can approve or reject the work item during this stage. This action allows the work item to leave the stage.

When this option is not selected, all of the identified approvers must approve or reject the stage (in any order) before the item leaves the stage. If any one of the approvers rejects the stage, the process interrupts and starts over so that the required changes can be made. Then the approvers can approve or reject the stage once again.

When a team is designated as an approver, any member of the team can grant or reject a stage.

Select the action you want to take if the work item is rejected at any stage of the path:

• Create an Issue: (Available only for project and task approval processes) An issue is created in the project or task where the approval process is running. The default assigned resource on the task, or the owner of the project is assigned to the issue. By default, the name of the issue created is Approval Rejected (<Project or Task Name>). This is a Rejection Issue, entered under the task or the project, depending on the approval process where the rejection happened.

• Set Status to: Choose one of the following:

  • Previous Status: The rejected project, task, or issue reverts to the status prior to the status that activates the approval process.

  • Any other status in the list: The rejected object moves to the status you choose, such as On Hold. You can choose one of the default statuses or a custom statuses you added to your Workfront system.

    If you select a status associated with an approval process as the rejection status, the rejected object moves to the selected status and it will be marked as "Pending approval".

    For example, if you select On Hold for the rejection status and the On Hold status is associated with an approval process, the rejected object is placed in the status of "On Hold - Pending approval" status, requiring the approval.