Approver Collaboration
Written by Michelle Henley
Updated at July 10th, 2024
Approver collaboration allows the selected or assigned approver(s) (or assigned reviewer) on a submitted request to add and/or remove additional approver(s).
The instructions below explain how to manually set an approver collaborator at a request level. Automated Approver Collaborators for information on how to set approver collaborators by user.
Once the feature is configured for your organization, click the Share button displayed in the upper right-hand corner
Within the Share screen, an Approvers tab will be displayed.
Reviewer
Definition: Reviewer(s) is the approver named on the approval workflow and whose name appears within the request history when an activity or recipient(s) are approved.
Primary Approver
Definition: Primary Approver is the approver named on the approval workflow and whose name appears within the request history when an activity or recipient(s) are approved.
When adding an Approver Collaborator, the following rules are applied:
- Once another user is added as an approver, they can act on and approve the steps in the request that they are added to.
- An original primary approver or reviewer can only add another approver to the steps in the request that the original approver or reviewer is assigned.
- If the original approver is responsible for multiple steps, the approver collaborator will be added to all of those steps.
- If an approver collaborator approves the activity, the approver collaborator replaces the original approver as the primary approver for the same step in the recipient approval workflow. Note: All other collaborators can continue to act on recipient(s) despite not being shown as the primary approver within the recipient workflow.
- Only a primary approver can add/remove approver collaborators to the request and only to the steps in which they are the primary approver. Therefore, if the collaborator approver replaces the original approver and becomes the primary approver, the original approver will no longer be able to edit the collaborators.
To add an approver collaborator, begin typing in the Add Collaborators box.
Once Collaborator(s) are chosen, click Share.
Once clicking Share, the system will:
- Send an email notification to the new collaborator(s).
- Going forward, the approver collaborators will be cc'd in all emails to the primary approver.
- The selected collaborator(s) will now be able to see the request(s) in the Shared With Me tab in the Approvals and Disclosures section of the gateway.
From the Shared with Me tab, the collaborator can now open the request to and take the same action as the original approver. Any approver viewing the request can also see who the collaborator(s) are on that request in the upper right-hand corner.
To delete an approver as a collaborator, click the Number of People the request is shared with.
Note: Only the primary approver can delete collaborator(s).
Select Delete from the dropdown menu to the right of the collaborator that you want to remove.
A pop-up box will open; select Confirm to continue.
Note: The system does not automatically remove approver collaborators if the original approver is reassigned.
For example, if approver A has approver collaborators assigned and approver A is reassigned to approver B, then the assigned approver collaborators for A still exist and can act on the request. Collaborators must be removed manually from the request by following the above instructions.