Approvals

The approvals solution allows you to create approval workflows for your forms. This ensures that any form submissions are approved by a specified approver before any submission events are triggered. 

Configure your approvals app

Open the solutions menu and click manage on the Approvals card. 

Summary

In the summary tab you can style and customise your Approvals Applet

Details - The title and tagline of your application that will be displayed when opening your app, as well as the link to open your Approvals Applet.

Email Sending - This is the email address that will be used to send emails to your approvers.

Colour Theme - This allows you to customise your application's Primary and Accent colours. 

Logo - This is the icon used for the Approvals application.

Approvers

Here you can add, remove and filter your approvers. An approver must be added to this list before they can be used in your approval flows. 

Once added your approvers will receive an email with a temporary password, they will need to use this to login before setting a new password. 

Groups

An approver can be added to one or more approval groups.

Approvals must be part of an approval group to receive approvals, as approval steps are only set at the group level. 

If you want to send an approval to a specific user simply create a group for that one approver and assign it to the approval step. 

Group Managers and Administrators

Group Managers and Administrators are able to access the Administration menu, see more on the Administration menu below. 

Group Managers are able to manage approvals that have been assigned to their group.

Administrators are able to manage all approvals. 

SAML Integration

Approvers can also authenticate using a SAML provider such as Active Directory and Auth0. 

To do this open the Approval Apps Approvers Menu and turn on the SAML integration. 

Once SAML is turned on you will need to configure your Groups. Please note that your existing groups will not carry over as SAML groups so these will need to be reconfigured if you have existing flows that are using the same group name. 

Click the Edit Groups button and start adding your groups and optional notification email addresses. 

Once your Groups are configured you will need to follow the steps on the screen to configure your Active Directory or Auth0 integration. To ensure your users have access to the correct approvals you will need to map the configured group name to your SAML user claims.

Flows

The approval flow is configured in the form workflow tab

Approval Applet

You can open the approval applet using the OPEN SOLUTION button on the solution page of the console. 

You will need to have a valid approver record to log in to the applet. 

Once you have logged in you will be able to see a list of your current pending approval, approvals that are requiring clarification and approvals where the clarification has been received.

From your approval applet, you can manage all the approvals that have been assigned to you. You can filter the approvals by status to find the approvals that are important to you.

Search and Filter

The Approvals App has a Search bar allowing you to find the specific Approval you are looking for. The Search bar will search on form name, submission title, submission Id, and External Id. 

You can also use the filters to customise your view so that you only see the approvals that are important to you. You can filter by step ensuring you are only seeing specific approval steps, you can filter on status such as awaiting approval or clarification requested to help limit your list of approvals and you can filter by payment to display only the approvals that have an associated payment.

Additional Notes

Approvers can include additional notes at any point in the approval process. There is no limit to the number of notes or the amount of information that can be added to notes. Approvers can add notes to steps that are assigned to their group. Approvers can also modify are delete notes from any approver in their group. 

Approve, Seek Clarification, Deny

These are the 3 options currently offered for OneBlink Approval flows. 

Approve

When the approver clicks the approve button they can add notes and optionally notify the submitted that the form has been approved. 

If you choose to notify the submitted the email address will automatically populate if the user was authenticated when they submitted the form. If the user was not authenticated then the email address will need to be copied from the form submission. If the user was not authenticated and did not include their email address in the form then the submitter was anonymous and can not be contacted. 

Seek Clarification

If seeking clarification is selected you are passing a note back to the original submitted. In this case, the submitter will need to be known. Once the notes and email address have been added you can click CONFIRM. 

This will email the original submitter with a link to the form pre-filled with their initial submission data.  

The email body will also include your note, specifying what requires clarification. 

Deny

Similar to approval you have the option of including a note, however in this case the note will be included in the Deny email back to the original submitter. If the submission is made anonymously then the submitter cannot be contacted the approval is removed from your approval list. 

Approval Administration

Allow your administrators and group managers to view, filter and manager approvals. 

Administration Menu

In the Administrator menu, administrators will have access to all approvals, including ones that were conditionally skipped.

Filters 

Change your filters to find the approvals you are looking for

• Submitted After - All approvals submitted after this date time (default to 12 am the previous day)
• Submitted Before - All approvals submitted before this date time
• Last Updated After - All approvals updated after this date time
• Last Updated Before - All approvals updated before this date time
• Last Updated By - Search on your approvers to find all approvals that were last updated by that approval user
• Form - filter your different flows to see only the ones that were submitted for a specific form 
• Status - filter on the status of the submission 
• External Id - Search for a specific External Id
• Submission Id - Search for a specific Submission Id

Show History

From here you can see all of the actions that have occurred for this approval, including any private or public notes added at each step in the flow. You can also access the historic and most recent submissions of the form. 

Administration Menu Approval Actions

Sometimes submissions that have been approved, denied, or conditionally skipped need to be changed. To accommodate this we have included the ability to Reopen, Deny or Approve any completed approval.

Reopen

If an approval has been completed an administrator can send the form back to the original submitted for clarification. This will send an email to the specified email address, containing a link that will open the form and pre-fill it with all of the previously submitted data. 

Deny

If an approval has been completely approved, an administrator can choose to deny the approval. Clicking the Deny button will bring up the deny pop-up the same as if it was clicked on the approvals home page. The administrator can then add any notes and choose to notify the person who submitted the form. 

Approve

If any step of an approval is denied an administrator can choose instead to approve it. This will move the approval onto its next step. If it is the last step of the approval, then the administrator will have the option to add notes and notify the person who submitted the form. 

Email Preferences

To modify your email subscriptions you can click your profile icon in the top right of the screen and select preferences. From here you can manage the emails you receive. By default, these will be turned on. 

Multi Factor Authentication (MFA)

Multi factor authentication (MFA), also known as two factor authentication (2FA), is a best practice that requires a second authentication factor in addition to a user name and password sign-in credentials. We strongly recommend enabling MFA to enhance your account security. 

To enable MFA, navigate to the Preferences screen in the Approvals app then select the profile icon in the top right corner of the screen.

Then select Preferences:

Select Setup MFA:

Authentication is done using an authenticator app like Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator to generate one-time passwords. Follow the steps included in the MFA set-up to configure your authenticator app and start using MFA to securely log in to the approval platform.

Upon completion, the Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) configuration should display as enabled.

Get Help

If you have any questions or would like assistance with setting up your Approvals Workflow please contact us via this support portal or email support@oneblink.io. We are happy to assist in any way we can.