Setting up Approval Sharing

• 14/10/2022
• 8 minutes to read

If you're unable to approve documents for a period of time, you can have all of your approval tasks automatically forwarded to another approver during that period. You essentially share your approval tasks with a designated approver, and this approver will then act as your substitute until you once again can approve documents yourself.

Approval sharing can be carried out for any user and any purpose (on behalf of other users than yourself) – typically done by admins – or for and by yourself if you're out of office.

Approval sharing

To set up approval sharing, follow these steps:

1. Choose the icon, enter Approval Sharing, and then choose the related link.
2. In the action bar, select Edit List to make the list editable.
3. In the Owner User ID and Shared to User ID columns, enter the user ID of the person who's sharing approval tasks and that of the substitute approver.
4. In the Sharing Type column, select Normal unless you specifically need to change the out-of-office settings of the person who's sharing approval tasks (a rather rare exception).

   Note

   Individual users usually set up out-of-office approval sharing themselves using the procedure described below. However, it may occasionally be necessary for an admin to do it on behalf of a user. In such cases, the admin must select Out of Office instead of Normal, and the user will then be able to edit the entry later, if necessary. If the admin selects Normal (by far the most common scenario), the user will not be able to edit the entry at a later point.

5. In the Valid From and Valid To columns, enter or select the start and end dates of the period in which approval tasks should be shared.
6. If you want the substitute approver to inherit the limits and permissions of the person who's sharing approval tasks, select the Use Owners Limits & Permissions checkbox.
7. Use Send Email To to choose whom approval emails are sent to. You get three options:
   
   • Only Owner
   • Only Shared To User
   • Both Users

Using a fictional user as a group

At times, creating a new user and using it as a fictional group is a practical way of handling certain situations, for example when managing multi-person approvals or when there is a company policy in place requiring top-level approvers to have their own approval requests approved by some one else.

Regardless of the approval limit setting for each user in this group, it's the setting for the group – the fictional user – that controls the approval limit.

To create a new user that will be used as a group, complete the following steps:

1. Choose the icon, enter Continia User Setup, and then choose the related link.
2. On the action bar, select New.
3. Fill out only the Continia User ID field and the Name field, and set an Approval Limit.

Now you have a new fictional user that can be used as a group. You add users to the group by completing the following steps.

1. Choose the icon, enter Approval sharing, and then choose the related link.
2. Under Owner User ID field, choose the user you created in the previous step.
3. Under Shared to User ID field, choose a user that is to be part of the approval sharing group.
4. Under Sharing Type, choose Normal.
5. Under Use Owner's Limits and Permissions, tick the box.
6. Under Forward Emails, tick the box.
7. Repeat these steps for each user you want in the group.

You can see the number of users who have been added to the group on the Continia Users page under Shared to this User.

Out-of-office approval sharing for individual users

Although you can indeed set up out-of-office approval sharing using the above guide, which is particularly useful for admins setting it up for multiple users at the same time, there's a more user-friendly way to do it for each individual user, enabling you to do it yourself:

1. Choose the icon, enter Expense Management Approval Entries, and then choose the related link.
2. In the action bar, select Out of Office Setup.
3. Under Forward from date and Forward to date, enter or select the start and end dates of the period in which your approval tasks should be shared.
4. Under Forward to, enter the user ID of the substitute approver to whom your approval tasks should be forwarded.
5. If you want your approval tasks to be shared for all companies in which both you and the substitute approver are present, select the Copy to All Companies checkbox. If you don't select this checkbox, the out-of-office approval sharing you're setting up will only apply to the company that you're currently in.