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Approval Templates can be created by users in the Admin, Admin Import, Business Admin, Contract Manager, Change Manager, Internal Vendor Supplier Manager, and Service Manager groups. New Approval Template records are normally added from under the All Approval Templates section of an Approval Workflow record. Creating an Approval Template record from the Approval Workflow record is best practice, because it automatically links the Approval Template record to the Approval Workflow record. However, if an Approval Template is created directly from the Approval Template table, a Workflow Title should be manually added in the record layout's common area. The required fields are Approval Title, Assign Approval Based On, and Step Number. Step Number and Approval Title are used when converting the Approval Template record to an Approval record.

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Each Approval Template record contains information about the Approval Workflow that uses it, as well as whether the approval is Required or Conditional. You can determine these conditions yourself by selecting Conditional from the Approval Usage drop-down list and then filling in the Condition field using the the Formula Help button button. Both required and conditional Approval records are automatically generated when the Create Approvals button is clicked in the Contract record, a Sourcing Event is progressed, or the Generate Approvals from Workflow button is clicked in the Change Request record.

When Conditional is selected, the Condition field appears. The user can then input a formula that gets evaluated when an approval is generated. This formula can contain any number of conditions that can be linked together by operators such as "or", "and", "contains", etc. TypicallyTypically, the Condition field contains a search criterion based on other field value(s) in the Contract or Contract or Change Request records. Conditional approvals are only generated if the condition is met.

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The selections in the Assign To field are based on records in the Replacement Variables table. Refer to the the Replacement Variables Table section  section for more information.

Step Number

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Approval Template records can be used as a notification, instead of an approval, by setting the Auto Approve? field to Yes. When the template is converted into an Approval record, a rule in the Approval table automatically sets the approval's Status to Approved. If Notify for Auto-Approval is set to Yes, this rule also sends a custom notification message in place of the assignment notification.

Automation

In the Standard System Demo, the Approval Templates table contains three rules. These rules are accessed by expanding the Approval Templates table in the left pane, selecting Setup Approval Templates, and then selecting the Rules tab:

• Edit: All Change Approval Edit Actions (web, API): This rule runs whenever an Approval Template record is edited by a user or another rule in the system. It uses an If-Then-Else action called I: Handle Flags to Generate or Check Change Approvals to ensure that Change Request approval templates still contain all the necessary information after being edited.
• Create/Edit: Blank out fields based on Assign Approval Based On (web, API): This rule runs whenever an Approval Template record is created or edited by a user or another rule in the system. It uses two If-Then-Else actions called I: Set Approval Template Relationship and I: Blank out fields on Assign Approval Based On. I: Set Approval Template Relationship is used to set approval template relationships based on whether a parent record is a Contract or Change Request record. I: Blank out fields on Assign Approval Based On blanks out certain fields in the layout based on the value in the Assign Approval Based On field. For example, if Assign Approval Based On is set to Assigned Team / Person, the rule blanks out the Assign To field, since this field's functionality is replaced with the Approval Team and Approver fields.
• Edit: All Contract Approval Template Edit Actions (web, API): This rule runs whenever an Approval Template record is edited by a user or another rule in the system. It uses an If-Then-Else action called I: Handle Flags to Generate or Check Approvals that does the same thing as Edit: All Change Approval Edit Actions (web, API) does, except this rule impacts Contract approval templates instead of Change Request approval templates.

Ownership

Approval Template records are owned by the user who creates them. Specifically, a record is owned by the user whose Login matches the Creator Login field.