Authorising on behalf of someone

[Lauren]

Hi,

In Supportworks, users who weren't listed as approvers could approve changes/releases on behalf of those who were listed as approvers. Is there a way to set this up in Service Manager, without assigning the highest Change and Release Management-related roles to those users? 

The reason for this is that some managers who were listed in our CAB would delegate to their technical leads to comment on changes/releases.

Thanks

Lauren

[BobbyB]

This is very useful in allowing supervisors/lead technicians to approve changes in their manager's absence.  This negates any delays in approving changes.

Thanks,

[Alisha]

+ 1 This would be helpful for us as well.

[Steven Boardman]

@Lauren @BobbyB @Alisha there isn't a concept of delegating approvals in Hornbill at this time, however have you considered different types of approval vehicles?  for example rather than having named users in an approval node, you could assign the approvals to a CAB group or all users who have a CAB role, and set the Authorisation Type to - Individual, Majority or Unanimous. 

This may allow you to then have tech leads and managers in groups, and allow any of them to move the approval forward, or in the case of a role , you could assign the role to the manager and their tech lead and they would both receive the authorisation based on their role being assigned the approval.

Outside of this, the formal approval nodes do not allow for reassignment by the approver when generated by the business process engine. 

If anything changes on the approval delegates we will post back here. 

 

 

 

[Gerry]

@Lauren @BobbyB @Alisha

We do actually have on our platform roadmap adding Task Deligates to user profiles.  The use case here is, in the vent someone goes on Holiday they will be able to enable one-or-more delegates who will be able to action tasks and approvals on their behalf.  This is not likely to be implemented any time before Q4 though but it does sound like this might be what you are looking for?

Gerry

[Lauren]

Thank you @Steven Boardman - I appreciate the suggestion but we couldn't have one group for all CAB authorisers as there is the risk that one approver could approve on behalf of another team. Unless I've not understood correctly? It would be the same for one role. Using multiple roles would work, but seems a bit much to set up/manage to achieve this.

Hi @Gerry that is something that would work unless it relies on the availability of the manager to permanently show as "On Holiday" or something. If it was just a setting they can enable (until turned off) without depending on anything else, that'd be great.

[Steven Boardman]

@Lauren yep just really looking to highlight the current options available to you. 

These options allow you to specify one group or one role for the approval 

The approval type is then individual, majority or unanimous, so you could set your rules, if there were multiple people in the group or multiple people with the given role. 

One other thought i did have, was the option to have the Technical approval done by the team lead's and their advise / approval / comments provided before it goes to the senior managers.  This way they could make informed approval decisions with the technical information available to them.   I am not suggesting for one minute you should change your process just for this, but thought i would throw out the idea of that type of flow..   

I'll let @Gerry comment on the delegates approach  

[Gerry]

@Lauren

No the delegates and the holiday availability would not be linked in that way.  The idea would be, you can add delegates to your profile at any time and give them permission to view and action your tasks on your behalf. 

Gerry

[Paul Taylor]

Just wondering if this ever happened or if its still on the roadmap?

[Gary@ADL]

@Gerry we'd very much like this too - very useful in these times.

 

cheers 

[Foley Coker]

Agreed, this is something that our organisation could really use, as the bottle neck in pushing the approvals, for short notice leave, or long term leave is causing hold ups.