Creating and editing approval flow templates

System administrators can create approval flow templates at the account level to help manage common multiple-step approval processes. Project managers choose a template to create an approval process for a creative item within a Review Area.

Before you begin

You should design your approval flow templates with sufficient flexibility to support your company's needs. Project managers can change the following aspects of the approval flow:
  • Step names
  • Descriptions
  • Duration of each step
  • Whether the creative item is locked
  • Whether the approval closes automatically or manually

Project managers can disable particular steps or approvals that may not be needed. They cannot add steps or approvals to the flow.

About this task

Creating templates for your common approval flows can streamline the approval flow process and may provide greater consistency and predictability of approval durations. For example, if you want to have both marketing and legal approve promotional material before it is published, you can create a two-step approval process where legal is automatically notified once the material is successfully approved by marketing.

The approval flow template is graphically displayed in the Flow Overview area of the Approval Flow Templates page. In the Flow Overview area, each approval is displayed as a box. Each step is displayed as a column of one or more boxes.

Initial approval flow templates include just one step and one approval for that step. You can add as many approvals within a step and as many steps in the approval flow as needed. Reorder steps (columns) by dragging and dropping them. Reorder approvals (boxes within a column) by dragging and dropping to reorder them within a step or to move them from one step to another.

Complete the following steps to create a template for the approval flow.

Procedure

  1. From the System Administration page, select Approval Flow Templates.
  2. Either click New Template or select the template to edit.
  3. Add or change the title and description for the template.
  4. Select how you want to close approvals.
    Option Description
    Automatically when all reviewers have approved
    • If any reviewer responds in any step with "Not approved", the approval flow owner and Review Area managers are alerted.
    • If all steps are approved, the approval closes with a status of "Approved" when the last reviewer approves the last step.
    Manually The approval owner must manually close the approval by selecting Action > Close Approval Flow.
  5. Lock the version of the review item, if necessary.

    Locking the version prevents reviewers from adding mark-up annotations within the version of the creative item in the Review Area. Leave the version unlocked if you want reviewers to enter comments using the Markup tool.

    Note: If you expect to lock your version, you should consider enabling the "Approved with Comments" response or provide a Comments box for the "Approved" response. This is configurable for your account under System Administration > Account Settings > Approval Settings.
  6. Enter the number of days until due. This is the number of days that reviewers have to respond before the approval step is late.
    Note: You can enter 0 for the number of days due. This means that the approval is due by midnight of the same day that the approval step begins. Fractional days are not supported.

    The due dates are calculated automatically when the template is applied using these durations.

  7. At the bottom, click in the fields to add Approval Titles and Approval Descriptions. Press Tab to move to the next field or to create a new row, which adds an approval for the current step. Each row corresponds to an approval box in the Flow Overview within the step.

    To delete an approval within a step, click the red x to right of the description field.

    Note: The maximum number of characters in description fields is 1333.
  8. To add steps in the approval flow, click Add Step and enter titles and descriptions.

    To delete a step, select it in Flow Overview and click Delete step. Confirm the deletion.

    Note: There must be at least one approval for each step.
  9. Optional: To reorder approvals within a step or to move an approval to another step, drag and drop the approval box in the Flow Overview. To reorder a step, drag and drop the step in the Flow Overview.
  10. Click Save when you are done.
    Note: In a new template, clicking Cancel discards the template. In an existing template, clicking Cancel reverts to the last saved version of the template.