Approval Sequences Overview

Overview

Almost all Commerce workflows involve multiple approval stages. As an example, let's say one of your sales agents submits a quote, and it has to be approved by multiple Sales Managers. Additionally, the quote might have to be approved by a Technical Manager before it is finalized. It may also have to be approved by a VP if the sale is over $100,000 or has a high discount.

At each approval stage, a quote must be approved for one or many reasons. In previous versions of CPQ, setting up multiple levels of approvals required the use of advanced BML scripts, multiple transition rules, as well as additional workflow steps. The purpose of the Standard Approval is to provide ease of administration and improved User-Side functionality.

An Approval sequence is triggered when the user submits a quote by clicking Submit. For more information about the Submit Action Set, see the topic Submit Action Set. The FullAccess user can implement a string of Reasons and their corresponding approvers to set up a multi-tiered approval process.

If there is no reason for an approver to approve the quote, the Submit action is successful and the quote is approved. If a Reason is satisfied, the appropriate approver(s) must Approve or Reject the quote. When the final quote has been revised (if necessary) and the final Approval is performed, the quote is approved.

When an approver is not available, a delegated approver can be assigned to approve quotes in their absence. See Delegated Approvers for more information.

A submitted quote can also be modified using the Revise action.

Approval sequence flowchart

Administration

To use approval sequences, use the Submit Action Set. Once your action set has been created, you can add reasons that determine if a quote needs to be approved. For every reason, the quote may follow a serial or parallel approval sequence (or both) with one or many approvers. You can set up one or many approval sequences within a Commerce workflow, using an intuitive and visual editor.

ClosedExample of an Approval Sequence

The Submit action is listed at the top of the sequence. The graph represents serial and parallel reasons and approver sequences.

Example Approval Sequence


ClosedParallel Approver Sequence

In a Parallel Approver Sequence, both approvers have to approve the quote for it to be considered "approved" and move to the next Step in the workflow. Notice in the image below that after the Managers approve the quote, either a VP or someone in Accounting must approve the quote.

Parallel Approval Sequence


ClosedSerial Approver Sequence

In a Serial Approver Sequence, the quote must be approved by a first-level approver before moving on to the next approver.

Serial Approval Sequence


Related Topics

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