Configure Approvers

This article will walk you through how to set up your approvals in Workflow Designer. This includes adding approvers, reordering approvers, and resetting approvals.

Approvers review and approve contracts. There are a variety of ways you can customize your approvers to meet your company’s needs. You can add sequential approvers groups so that approvers are notified and required to approve one after. You can also add parallel approvers so that approvers are notified at the same time and can approve at any time, in no particular order.

If you want to add conditional role assignments, refer to Build Conditional Role Assignments. Conditional role assignments enable you to define when a user should be notified throughout the workflow process based on conditions in your workflow.

Configure Approvers

1. Click on the Workflow Designer tab and select the workflow configuration you want to modify. Click the Review tab that corresponds to the role you want to configure. **
2. Click Add Approver.
3. Click on the title and add a descriptive title for your role. This is how the role appears once a workflow is launched.
4. Click Add instructions to provide your users with approval guidance.
5. In the When is initial approval required? dropdown, either select Always or select a condition from your workflow configuration. When that condition is met, the approval will be required.
6. In the When should approval be reset? dropdown, select one of the following:
   1. Always: Approvals will be reset in all of the following situations: workflow reverts to review, drafts documents update, and fields are updated.
   2. Workflow reverts to Review: Approvals will be reset if the workflow is reverted to the Review stage.
   3. Draft documents update: Approvals will be reset if the workflow’s draft document’s are updated.
   4. Field Changes: Approvals will be reset if the field you select is updated at any point in the workflow’s process.
7. In the Who can approve dropdown, select a role, users, or group you would like to be assigned the approval. You can also click Invite new user to invite a new user to be an approver. If you want to add conditional role assignment, refer to Build Conditional Role Assignments. Conditional role assignments enable you to further control who is assigned to your Approver Role based on conditions.
   1. Strongly Recommended: Add a group as an approver, even if there is only one user in that group, to facilitate reassigning the role to others in the group in the future. If possible, include an Admin user in the group to allow for the greatest flexibility if reassignment ever has to occur. It is strongly discouraged to add an individual as an approver instead of a group.
8. In the How will the approver be assigned? dropdown, select from the following options:

   1. Assign manually: This option adds a form question to the workflow. During the launch form process, the workflow owner will choose an approver from the list of potential approvers you configured in the previous step.

      

   2. Rotate assignment automatically: This option automatically rotates through the list of everyone you configured to approve in the previous step.

   3. Assign to a group’s default user: This option allows you to select a group if you selected one in the previous step. If selected, the workflow’s approvals will automatically be assigned to the group’s default user.

   4. Assign to a user: This option allows you to select a user if you selected one in the previous step. If selected, the workflow’s approvals will automatically be assigned to the user.

   5. SCIM Assignment: If you have SCIM with custom attributes integrated in your Ironclad instance, you can use these to determine how the approval will be assigned. To learn more, refer to User Reference Chains Overview.
9. If you want to add sequential approvers groups so that approvers are notified and required to approve one after the other:
   1. Verify Collect approvals in order is enabled.
   2. Click Add next approver. This creates new approval tier in sequence.
   3. Configure your approval tier. When a workflow is launched, the approve button will display during the Review step only when it is the approver’s turn to approve.
10. If you want to add parallel approvers so that approvers are notified at the same time and can approve at any time, in no particular order:
    1. Click Add approver. A new approver is added.
    2. If you want ALL approvers to be parallel approvers, deselect Collect approvals in order.
    3. Configure your approver. When a workflow is launched, parallel approvers can approve at any time, in any order. The approve button displays during the Review step for the parallel approvers at the same time.
11. When to Approve. Set up when you want your approvers to be looped into the workflow using conditions. By default, an approver is configured to Always trigger.
12. If you want to add conditional role assignment, refer to Build Conditional Role Assignments. Conditional role assignments enable you to further control who is assigned to your Approver Role based on conditions.
13. If you want to reorder your approvers, use the up and down arrows or click the three stacked dots > Reorder steps.
14. Click Save.

Select Approvers

In the How will the approver be assigned? dropdown, select from the following options:

1. Assign manually: This will automatically create a dropdown question in the Launch Form for that approver role, allowing workflow requesters to decide who should approve the workflow.

   

2. Rotate assignment automatically: This option automatically rotates through the list of everyone you configured to approve in the previous step.

3. Assign to a group’s default user: This option allows you to select a group if you selected one in the previous step. If selected, the workflow’s approvals will automatically be assigned to the group’s default user.

4. Assign to a user: This option allows you to select a user if you selected one in the previous step. If selected, the workflow’s approvals will automatically be assigned to the user.

Reset Approvals

Use the When should approval be reset? dropdown to configure the specific scenarios in which an approval should be reset.

You may want approvals to be reset in the following situations:

1. Workflow reverts to Review: Approvals will be reset if the workflow is reverted to the Review stage.
2. Draft documents update: Approvals will be reset if the workflow’s draft document’s are updated.
3. Field Changes: Approvals will be reset if the field you select is updated at any point in the workflow’s process.
4. Always: Approvals will be reset in all of the situations listed above.

By default, When should approval be reset? is set to Always, which means that an approval will always be reset in all of the scenarios above. If you don’t select anything, the approval will Never be reset.

Example scenarios include:

1. If you want Legal to approve again if a document is redlined, set the Reset approval condition to Draft documents update.
2. If you want the Workflow Owner to approve again if your workflow reverts to Review from the Sign step, add the Reset approval condition Workflow reverts to Review.
3. If you want Finance to approve again, only if the Total Contract Value has changed, set the Reset approval condition to the field tied to Total Contract Value.

If a workflow reverts to Review from the Sign step, and no approvals are configured to reset, the Workflow Owner will be assigned as an approver. If a workflow reverts to Review from the Sign step, and at least one previous approval is configured to reset, the Workflow Owner will NOT be assigned as an approver.

Admin Control of Resetting Approvals

If you are an Admin, during Review, you can control whether or not approvals reset as configured in Workflow Designer.

By default, this checkbox is checked, and all approvals that are configured to reset, given a specific workflow change, will be reset. An example of this is upon updating draft documents, if the checkbox is checked, all approvals configured to reset under the condition “Draft Documents update” or “Always” will reset.

If the checkbox is unchecked, no approvals will reset, even those configured to reset, given the workflow change. An example of this is upon updating draft documents, if the checkbox is unchecked, all approvals configured to reset under the condition “Draft Documents update” or “Always” will NOT reset.