Approval Types

The individual that is set as an approver can be one of the following approval types:

• Employee. A specific employee within the organization.

• Position. A general position within the organization.

• Either of the aforementioned. Employee and Position are both multi-value groups. The third option is Either. If there is more than one owner or position specified against an approval item, then either one of them is allowed to approve or deny the Inbox item.

• Note: If your organization defines the relationship between Employee and Position as 1:1, the distinction between Approval Types is irrelevant. If your organization chooses to use the approval type Position, only the primary employee for the position is alerted.

Automating an approval process involves the following steps:

• Administrator defines approval items and approval stages. For more information, see Defining Approval Items and Approval Stages.

• Administrator invokes approval processing. For more information, see About Invoking the Approvals Manager Business Service from a Workflow.

• End users approve or decline an approval stage. For more information, see Approving or Declining Approval Stages (End User).

Interaction of the Approvals engine parts is shown in the following figure.