Defining an approval delegate

An approval delegate assumes an approver's quote approval responsibilities when the approver is not available.

For example, an approver can delegate his quote approval responsibilities to another user for times when the approver is traveling or on vacation. Similarly, the approval delegate can delegate his responsibilities to a different approver, creating a delegation chain. For example, Employee B can be defined as the approval delegate for Employee A from 05/01/11 to 05/08/11, and Employee C can be defined as the approval delegate for Employee B from 05/01/11 to 05/08/11. In this example, Employee C is responsible for approving quotes from 05/01/11 to 05/08/11.

Enterprises support delegation chains, except for instances where a circular delegation occurs. In the earlier example, Employee C cannot delegate his quote approval responsibilities to Employee A or Employee B for the 05/01/11 to 05/08/11 date range because this delegation would create a circular delegation chain.

Automatic approvals support approval delegation. For example, a sales representative delegates his quote approval responsibilities to his manager. The manager is higher in the quote's approval sequence than the sales representative, so when the manager approves the quote for the sales representative, the quote is approved at the manager level and the sales representative level. In a similar example, a manager delegates his responsibilities to the sales representative. The sales representative is delegated to act at the manager level, so when the sales representative approves the quote, it is approved at the manager level and the sales representative level.

An approver can define multiple approval delegates for an effective date range by specifying a primary delegate, as shown in the following example.