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Each record in the Approvals table is an individual instance that is linked to a parent Change Request, Service Request, Purchase Request, Document, Sourcing Event, Project, Contract, Opportunity, Contact, Support Case, or Asset record. You can tell which table an Approval record is related to by checking the Related To field. In the Standard System Demo, there are currently only Approval records for Contracts, Sourcing Events, Documents, and Change Requests present.

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Approval records are usually generated by the Contract Manager from the record that requires approval using Approval Workflows and their related Approval Templates, but can also be created ad hoc from the parent record by users with the appropriate privileges. After the Approval records have been created, they will sit in a status of Queued until the approvals are launched. When the status is changed to Pending Approval, the Approver or a member of the Approval Team can add notes about the approval or rejection in the Approval Notes field. Notes added to the Approval Notes field of Approval records are appended to the Approval Notes field under the Approvals tab of the parent record.

When generated from Sourcing Event records, an approval can be in either of these two states:

• Pre-Approval, such as you would see from an Initial Sourcing Event.
• Final Approval, such as you would see for Selection Approvals. When in a Final Approval state, the Approval record includes an embedded search under the Solicitation heading of the Details tab. This search lists any vendor responses related to the Sourcing Event that have been accepted, and thus have a Status of Awards Recommended. This allows the approver to see any successful vendor responses for the sourcing event.
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Use Cases

Read the following use cases to learn more about how to create related Approval records from the Contract, Document, and Change Request tables.

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The default Status for a new Document approval record is Pending Approval. Document Approval records are all created with a Step Number of one through conversion.  For more information on approvals for documents, see the Documents Table section.

Use Case for Sourcing Event Approvals

Sourcing Event Approval records can be created in two ways:

• Clicking Create Approvals in the Selection Process tab of a Sourcing Event record
• Manually, from the Approvals table

Generally, the best option is to create an Approval directly from the Sourcing Event record by clicking Create Approvals. However, before you can click Create Approvals, you must first select an Approval Workflow from the Workflow Title field in the Approvals tab. The Approval Workflows that are available to Sourcing Event records can be checked by looking at the Related To column of records in the Approval Workflow table. Remember to ensure that your Approval Workflow record is available for the correct Sourcing Event Type by checking the Available for Sourcing Event Types field of the Approval Workflow record. The default workflow by Sourcing Event Type can be set within the Sourcing Event Type table.

Use Case for Change Request Approvals

Change Request Approval records can be created in two ways:

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