Internal approval is often of interest to companies who are doing some engineering on behalf of their customer. They want to work with their suppliers to ensure the documents are correct, prior to sending them on to their customer.

When enabled, an internal approval cycle is initiated when cards are first received by your company (from suppliers or other 3rd parties). Cards are sent to your users (via routing), who in turn apply an internal status (similar to customer statuses). The cards are then queued for return to their source.

After return, if cards have been “approved”, they continue their workflow to be sent to the stage target (generally the customer).

Using Internal Approvals

Enable Internal Approvals

The first step is to enable the option for your company. This is done through the Admin screen.

Navigate to Settings > General > Project Default Options.

 

Once enabled in the admin area, Internal Approval can be managed individually (enabled/disabled) on each Project on the Project Fields Template.

Set up internal approval list

Internal approval status lists are created on the Internal company.

The APPROVED checkbox has the same function as the complete checkbox on the customer return status list. It indicated the card may continue on its workflow after return to its source. There is also a PENDING option which must remain. That status is applied when cards first start the cycle.

These values can be changed to your companies statuses. The default values are A, P, R; but could be 1,2,3,4 or A,B,C,D or whatever your company wishes to use for approval statuses.

Enable internal approval on stage list

The internal approval workflow is enabled on any specific stage. Simply check the “Internal Approval” checkbox when creating a new stage.

Apply internal approval routing scenarios

Internal approval is applied through routing scenarios.

Routing scenarios are most commonly applied in a project’s Code List (Requirements) screen.

In the Code List, for the doc code(s) which will require internal approval, select a Stage List that includes an internal approval stage. Save the changes.

In the Routing Scenario column, click within the grid in the row for one of the doc codes that will require internal approval. If the project already includes the appropriate routing scenario, select it. If not, select Add New.

On the slide that pops up, enter a name for the scenario and select the pencil (edit) icon next to Internal approval.

Select the required roles and users, then save.

The internal approval routing scenario is now applied to all of the cards in the selected doc code.

To apply internal approval to multiple doc codes at once or to specific cards, see here.

 

Internal approval workflow

Upload document, and apply approval status

When a document is assigned to a card with internal approval workflow, the user will see

1) The approval status set to “Pending”, and

2) The list of reviewers for the approval cycle.

As the document makes it way through the outstanding actions for each of the reviewers, they will have the opportunity to add markups, and assign/change the approval status.

Return to source

Once all reviewers have completed their review, the document will be queued for return to the original source to inform them whether the document has comments or if it was accepted internally.

In this case, the source of the document was Sub-Supplier, so the card will show in the out to sub-supplier queue.

*Note that source is set by the Type which was selected on the Code List (i.e Generated Sub-Supplier or Generated Internal).

If the document was approved, after sending to source, it will be placed also in the outbound to customer queue which is the target and normal workflow will be enabled.

Variables

Variables are available for the Sub-supplier/Internal cover sheets and transmittal documents. These show the internal approval status of the document, so your submitters know whether the document has been approved or rejected.