intelligentcontract

You are, optionally, able to set up Approval rules. Approval rules can be created based on a contract type (e.g. Legal, Procurement) and value (e.g. more than £10,000 annually) so that when a contract is submitted for approval, users are offered the correct approval rule based upon the contract's data.

Tip: Although Rules can be set up, you can also allow users to build their own approval route at the time they submit a contract for approval. This is controlled by the Approval Configuration setting of 'Allow user to build approval chain at submission?'

Creating a Rule

Navigate to Configuration -> Approval -> Rules

Click on [New] to create a new rule

Click on an existing rule record to view and edit if required

The Approval Rule form will be displayed, complete the relevant details and [Save]

Fig 1 - Approval Rule form

• Name - Give your new rule a name
• Contract Types - Choose one or more Contract Type(s) that this rule applies to. You can leave this field blank if the rule applies to all contracts
• Contract Value Criteria - Use the Drop down lists and fields to determine the Contract Value parameters, the default is 'Not specified'
• Approval Route - Choose the approval route for the contracts that meet the criteria specified. 
• Use Supervisor -  This will route contracts for approval to the submitter's supervisor 
• Select [Sequential] or [Parallel] Chain - This will then allow you to specify the users/approval groups that contracts for this rule will be routed to.  “sequential” = each user/approval group in turn and “parallel” = all users/approval groups are notified at once
• Click [Save]
• Repeat for each Rule that is required

When a user now submits a contract the rules will be checked and the user will be able to select a rule that is appropriate for routing.

TIP: If selecting an Approval Route of 'Use Supervisor' then the Users Supervisor must be defined within the Users profile, please refer to User setup for details how to assign a Supervisor to a User

TIP: If using the criteria of 'Has no Value' that this will apply to contracts where the Contract Value option has been set to 'No value', Contract values with a numeric '0' will not be applied to the rule

Fig 2 - Contract value form options

Note: If you have existing Approval Rules with Users selected and consequently they have been unseated (licence removed) then your Rules must be updated to reflect this for good housekeeping purposes.  

intelligentcontract will not prevent you from sending out Approval requests to unseated Users but we will warn you along the way.

When you unseat a User if they are part of an Approval Rule the system will tell you, you should then update those Rules accordingly.

If you manually select an unseated User the system will tell you as you progress the Approval request but it will not prevent the request for being sent.