Application Approval

Approval of a request made in Shopping is a vital part of the provisioning workflow. In some cases, approval for a user to get a certain item will be the responsibility of the user's line manager, for example a 'line of business' application or a piece of equipment needed to do their job. This form of approval is lookup approval – Shopping has to look up the user's Manager in AD to determine whom the approval request needs to be directed to. As such, it requires the Manager attribute to be populated in AD (on the Organization tab of the user properties) for all users.

In other cases, there may be a named individual or team responsible for the item, whoever requests it (for example access to the company's CRM system). Some items may require more than one level of approval, typically the case if the item is particularly expensive or involves multiple parties in the provisioning of the item. At each level, approval may be required from an individual, any individual from a group, or all members of a group. These individuals and groups must be defined as Approvers through the Shopping console before they can be linked to Applications.
In this Lab, you will introduce Approval to some of the Applications you have already created and observe each approval model in action.

Manager based approval

In this exercise, you will add Manager-based approval to the XML Notepad application and observe the approval workflow in action.

Verify that users have their manager defined in AD

Before using manager-based approval, it is important to check that users have their manager defined in AD, and that these managers each have a valid email address defined in AD.

Add Manager Approval to an Application

You will now add approval to the XML Notepad so that any requests for this application must be approved by the manager of the requesting user.

Shop for an Application with Manager Approval

In this task, you will request the XML Notepad Application, which will initiate the approval process.

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1eli Log on to 1ETRNW71 as User (you may need to log off Sales User) and launch the Shopping portal from the browser 1eli In the search box enter XML and press Enter 1ewarning If you don't see the application, you're logged in as the wrong user, most likely SalesUser. 1eli Observe the XML Notepad tile and note the Approval Required text below the More Info link 1eli Click Request and note that you are then asked to explain why you need the application. Enter some text and click Request. Your comments here will be seen by the approver when they go to approve the request 1ehot tip Note that the status on the XML Notepad tile has changed to ORDER PLACED 1eli Remember that you can view the progress of any order from the My Software page. Click the button in the page header 1eli Select the All Orders tab. Although you might expect to see your order here, it will actually only appear here once the approval has been completed 1eli Note the Pending Approval tab has (1) appended to the tab name, indicating that you have one request that is pending approval. Select this tab to view the order you just placed 1eli The Pending Approval tab shows all requests made by the logged on user that are awaiting approval. Click the XML Notepad hyperlink (under Application Name) to view detailed status of the request, including who is due to approve it (you may need to scroll down to see this information)

Follow the Approval process

You will now step through the process of approving the order for XML Notepad.

Chaining Approvers

In this exercise, you will add a chain of approvers to the Project 2010 Application. In this scenario, the user's manager must first approve it, followed by the License Manager.

Define Approvers

With the exception of the <MANAGER>, approvers need to be defined in the console before they can be applied to Approval workflow. In this task, you will add some users as Shopping Approvers for use in the subsequent exercises.

Add Approval Chain to an Application

In this task, you will build a chain of approval, starting with the requester's manager followed by LicenseManager for the Project 2010 application.

Shop for an Application with a Chain of Approvers

You will now request Project 2010 from the Shopping portal to initiate the chained approval workflow.

Follow the approval process

You will now follow the approval process as the request for Project 2010 goes to each approver.

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1eli Log on to 1ETRNW101 as 1ETRNW72 as Manager1 (should already be logged in with this user) 1eli Open the Shopping portal (close and reopen if it is already open from the previous exercises) and select the Approval tab on the navigation panel. Note the menu in the navigation panel shows Pending (1), indicating there is one request awaiting approval. Click this to view the Pending Approval page 1ehot tip This is an alternative method to approving or rejecting requests outside of the notification email and is useful for approvers who want to address all pending approvals at a time that is convenient to them. 1eli The Pending Approval page shows all requests that are awaiting approval by the logged-on user. Click the button to view the comments of the original requestor ("Shopper Comments"). As the Approver, you can add your own comments to the request in the free-text field below Approver Comments. Add a comment of your choice and click the Approve button

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1eli Log onto 1ETRNW102 as 1ETRNW73 as LicenseManager 1eli Open Mail and review the Request for Application Approval email from user@1etrn.local 1eli Open the Shopping portal and select the Approval tab on the navigation panel, then select Pending (1) to view the pending request 1eli In this instance, you will reject the request. Click the button and add a comment (under Approver Comment) to give the poor fellow some reason for your decision and click the Reject button

Adding Deputy Approvers

The approval workflow in the previous exercise required two people to approve the Application request. If either of those people were particularly busy or on vacation at the time, the user could be waiting for some time before they can use the application they have requested.

Shopping allows an Approver to have an assigned Deputy, so if the request is not approved by the approver within a defined duration, the request will go to the Approver's deputy.

The duration before an approval request is escalated to the deputy is defined by the Maximum Approval Hours setting in the Deputy Approvers group of settings in the console. By default, this is set to 24, and the minimum period is 1 hour. If no deputy has been defined for the designated

In this exercise, you will add Manager2 as the deputy for both Manager1 and LicenseManager.

Add a Deputy for a <MANAGER> Approver

1ETRN\Manager1 is not currently defined as an Approver (he does not need to be explicitly named to be able to approve requests for his subordinates where the Approval is manager-based). However, in order for an Approver to have a deputy they must be explicitly defined as an Approver. In a large organization, with lots of Managers, the list of Approvers would become increasingly difficult to work with. 
To allow a deputy to be assigned to every manager without that manager actually appearing in the list of available approvers, the LookUp Only option is used.

Add a Deputy for a specific Approver

In this task, you will add Manager2 as a deputy approver for LicenseManager, who is already defined as an Approver.

Modify the Approval Escalation Interval

In this task, you will reduce the Maximum Approval Hours to one (the minimum possible value) and increase the frequency with which the Central Service checks requests that need to be escalated. Later in the course, you will return to this exercise to see the escalation occur.

Shop for the Application with deputy approval

In this task, User will request Project again

Follow the approval process

In this task, the first approver in the chain (manager1) will already show as approved with a time stamp from the previous approval. The second approver (LicenseManager) will ignore the approval request. After an hour of the request being approved by manager1, the request will be escalated to LicenseManager's deputy (Manager2).

Lab Summary

In this lab, you have learned how to apply Approval workflow to Applications. Requests for approval can be dynamic, directed to whomever is defined as the Manager of the user requesting the Application, or specific to the Application itself. Multiple levels of approval can also be defined, with the request only progressing to the next Approver if the current Approver approves the request.

You have also, or will soon, seen that if a request is pending approval for longer than the configured Maximum Approval Hours, the request will be escalated to the defined deputy, or to the Default Deputy if no deputy has been defined for the Approver. In either case, if a request is left pending approval of one approver for more than 10 days (configurable through the Auto Reject Timeout setting), the request will be automatically rejected.

Next Page
Ex 6 - Shopping 5.6 - Efficient use of Application Licenses