This section describes how to set up the project approval process that is required. Please make sure to read The Project Approval Process first, which describes some of the options and how the approvals process works from the perspective of the person that does the day-to-day administration of Calpendo.

 

As described in The Project Approval Process, there are two approaches to project approval: the single-step approval or the multi-step approval. This section will not cover the question of why to choose one method over the other, but will instead focus on how to set up each method.

Final Approval: When A Booking Can Use A Project

A project can be associated with a booking when its status is set to Approved. This means that changing a project's status to Approved is the final step of a multi-step approval process, and the only step in a single-step approval process. The approval itself (that is, changing the status) is described in The Project Requests Page.

Single-Step Approval Process

As mentioned above, if a single-step approval process is being used, then the project status just needs to be set to approve or deny. Nothing special in this case needs to be configured. However, it is possible that Calpendo has been pre-configured with some properties intended for use in a multi-step approval process. Therefore, there may be some properties on projects that are not required. See Configuring Project Properties for information on changing the properties on a project.

Multi-Step Approval Process

A multi-step approval process does not have specific support in Calpendo. However, the effect can be achieved by adding properties to Project to store the various approval stages. For example, suppose it is required to provide separate approvals for the science, finance and ethics before final approval can be given. In this case, the recommended configuration is as follows:

 

1.Create boolean (Yes/No) properties on Project called scienceApproval, financeApproval and ethicsApproval using the Bakery as described by Configuring Project Properties.
 

2.Set up Permissions so that only the desired people can set scienceApproval, financeApproval and ethicsApproval to true on any project.
 

3.Set up Permissions so that only the desired people can modify the project status to Approved and only then when scienceApproval, financeApproval and ethicsApproval are already set to True.
 

4.Set up Permissions so that only the desired people can modify the project status to Denied but that this can be done regardless of scienceApproval, financeApproval and ethicsApproval.

 

If the approvals need to be given in a particular order, then configure this using the Permissions, so that whoever gives the financial approval may only do so once the ethics approval has been given, for example.

 

It would be a good idea to also set up Workflows to help notify people when it's time for them to give their approval. To do this, make sure that there are a set of conditions on the Email Workflow Action so that it is triggered by a change that means the project is now in a state suitable for them to give their approval.