Approval Workflow Experience on TechZone

Approval Workflow Experience on TechZone

Approval workflow is an experience on TechZone that allows the IBM Technology Zone team and content authors to set an environment on their collections to require approval before the automatic provisioning process.

Users

• How to tell an environment requires approval?

Indicators will display on the environment tile in the description as shown in below example

As well as, when on the reservation form, there are two indicators displayed with a banner on the request form as well as the button in the bottom right hand corner will read "Submit for approval".

Lastly, after a request form has been submitted, navigating to My Reservations page and clicking on the pending approval request tile will display the details page. Find the Approval team on this details page and click the hyperlinked team name for the emails of the individuals in this group.

• How long will a request take to be reviewed?

The IBM Technology Zone team will review requests within 3 to 5 business days. As we onboard additional teams, we will work through enhancements to capture their policies and review process to ensure users have more information regarding their request.

• What emails will I review through out the request process?

Users will receive an email confirming that their request was submitted which will be a pending approval status email. Along with an email once a request has been approved or denied. For requests that have been denied, a reason is required for the approving group to provide to the user/requestor and additional comments will be required that will be shared in the email.

• Where can I find my requests that are pending approval?

Users/Requestors can find requests that are pending approval right from their reservations widget from their dashboard

Another place to find requests that are pending approval is right from your my reservations page

How to setup an environment to be requested through the approval workflow

If you have an environment that you would like to add an approval workflow for, please contact brooke.jones@ibm.com to get started as we just released this new experience in the 23.1 release and are working through slowly onboarding users and content teams to gather feedback on experience for further improvements.

Working with our team, we will work with you to understand the environment constraints for needing the approval workflow, go through a process to onboard your approving group, and lastly review duration policies for your environment.

Approvals Page

The "Approvals" page is an approving group permissions page that allows approvers to review and manage requests.

Follow process above for how to setup an environment to be setup with necessary permissions to see the approvals page.

Initially the page will display a list of summaries for each request.

To see details of each request, select review request.

Review details provided on the request and select the approve or deny radial.

Choosing Approve will allow you to capture additional comments that are provided in the email back to the user if you have additional comments to include for reason for approval.

Choosing Deny will drop down an additional field labeled "reason". Select the reason for denial and add a comment. Both the reason selected and the comments will be provided back to the requestor/user in the denied email so they have more information regarding the decision.

If you do not see a reason in the drop down list that matches your reason for denying the request, contact brooke.jones@ibm.com to request adding an additional reason. The TechZone team will review and create additional reasons as needed.

Select Submit and the status will update from pending approval to approved.

The requestor/user will see the status change on their my reservations page or reservations widget right from their home page along with the email on the decision with reason.