Project Gates Opening Automatically Upon Approval
You can set up a project gate to open itself upon approvals from all approvers or close even when a single approver rejects. You can automatically set a project gate to Open status upon receiving the final approval from the listed approvers. This approach eliminates a step, so the project manager does not have to change the gate status manually. Open gates can't be deleted in both manual and automated modes.
Instead of the manual step required to open or close a gate, the system automatically changes the status based on the approver's response. This automation saves the time and manual effort of tracking the opening or closing of gates. You cannot delete a gate once it is approved and open as the gate is complete and retains final approval history.
| Action | Status Change | Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| Auto Open | In review to Open | Gate opens when all approvers approve. For example, Laura, Mille, and Sam are approvers assigned to a gate. When all three approvers approve, the system itself changes the status from In review to Open. |
| Auto Close | In review to Close | Gate closes even if a single approver rejects. Any rejection requires the approval process to start afresh, which means that the gate moves back to the Close status. For example, Laura, Mille, and Sam are approvers assigned to a gate. Sam rejects, therefore the system itself changes the status from In review to Close. Approval from the other approvers also gets withdrawn at this stage. |
Considerations for enabling automatic status change:
- The system auto opens the gate only when all approvers approve.
- System auto closes when any of the approvers rejects. Status change happens on the first rejection. The approval notifications get withdrawn for anyone else with pending approval.
- Approvals can come through:
- The notification approval by the approvers including delegation and reassignment in the workflow.
- The manual update by the project manager.
- On auto-close, the following information gets retained for audit history:
- Gate Approver Status
- Comments
- Updated By
- Updated Date
In automated mode, on Auto Close, the audit history gets cleared when the gate status is updated from Close to In review. In manual mode, the audit history gets cleared when the gate status changes to Close explicitly from any other state such as In review or Terminated.
- When a gate is open, the delete option is disabled in the context menu, toolbar, and the Gantt.