Project Management & Approvals
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      Project Approval Workflow

      Learn how project approvals work and how they can help your company put out better projects. 

      One of the most powerful features of ScopeStack is the standardization of project approval flows.

      Check out this video overview of the feature:

      This feature is currently available on Premium plans and higher.

      Defining Technical, Sales, and Business Approval Users

      Approvers for projects are defined in Settings > Governance > Project Approval. Admin's can setup Project Approval at 3 levels: Technical, Sales, and Business.

      Technical Approval allows you to designate specific users or groups of users to approve projects.

      To define an approval stage for a specific Line of Business, click the "+ Add LOB Approval" button. Here, you can define the approval parameters for a specific Line of Business.

      1. First, select the Line of Business to create an approval mechanism for

      2. Next, select the number of approvals necessary for technical approval to be achieved.

      3. Decide if you want the presales engineer assigned to the project to be able to approve of that project.

      4. If you are using Teams, decide if you want the approval to be limited to the same team as the Presales Engineer on the project.

      After you've defined these settings, click Submit. Now, you can define users who may approve of the project. To add a potential approver for this Technical Approval level, click "+ Add Approval User."

      Here, you can define users who can approve of a project. You can also designate specific users as required approvers.

      Users who are Required Approvers are required to approve of a project before it can proceed through approval flow.

      Using these settings, you can create several different permutations of Technical Approval situations.

      Sales Approval provides an opportunity for the Sales Executive designated on a given project to review the project.

      Business Approval provides a final step of approval for projects.

      It's triggered based on logical conditions and can request specific users to approve or deny based on the criteria a project meets. Available triggers are Total Cost, Net Revenue, Gross Margin, and Gross Profit

      Companies can add multiple business approval triggers and multiple users per trigger.

      Project Approval Process

      Requesting Approval

      After you have created a project with tasks, you can Submit it for Approval. Under General > Project Overview, you will now see an option to Request Approval

      After you submit your project for approval, the platform will automatically send email notifications to the appropriate approval users as designed in the Settings menu and triggered based on the details of the project. The email contains some basic information about the project so the administrator can quickly review.

      The icon next to the project in the list will also change from yellow to red while it is pending approval.

      Canceling Approval Requests

      Any user of the platform with a Role that has the Projects Overview permission set to Manage can cancel the approval request of any project. This will bring the project back to the Scoping state making it editable.

      The Cancel Approval Request button will be visible on the Project Overview screen of projects in the approval flow if you have appropriate permissions.

      Completing the Approval Flow

      An Approvals section will also appear in the project's menu, giving you a rundown of who needs to approve a project before it can proceed. It will stay updated based on what approvals have been completed.

      That user can then click on status and select if they would like to approve or decline the project, and give comments to the project creator.

      After a project is approved at one level, it will move on to the next level of approval as applicable.

      If a project is not approved, it will move back through the process depending on the point at which it was disapproved and why it was disapproved.

      • At the business level, a project can be disapproved on either Scope or Price. If it is disapproved on Scope, it will move back to the Pre-sales Engineer.  If it is disapproved on price, it will move back to the Sales approval if applicable.

      • If it is declined at the Sales level or the sales level is not required, it will move back to the Pre-sales Engineer to adjust the project before resubmitting for approval.

      Once a project is resubmitted, it will move back through the Technical Approval process before proceeding to Sales and Business, if applicable. Email notification are sent throughout the process to notify users if they need to take action. Every time a project is submitted for approval, it iterates a new version in the platform. 

      Happy scoping!

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