Core to any approval workflow, are the Approval Steps that it consists of. How many your workspace has, depends on the configuration choices that were made for it by your workspace admin.
What are approval steps?
An approval process (captured in an approval workflow) typically follows a bespoke order, in which one seeks approvals. The order is reflected in Cohero by steps. This order is different per company, but it often starts with stakeholder reviews, or subject-matter expert approvals, and it typically ends with a final approval. The amount of steps an organization demands its users to follow, is defined by its business processes and compliance standards.
Examples of approval steps
Some common examples of approval steps we see:
Stakeholder review
Market approval
Brand/Marketing approval
Regulatory approval
Final approval
How can I configure my workflow (and thus: approval steps)?
There's several aspects to an approval workflow, that organizations can configure. Today, this configuration is done at the moment of workspace setup. But soon enough, workspace admins will be able to configure these matters by themselves:
Amount of steps - The amount of steps is entirely up to you. There is no limit, only a minimum of 1 (one).
Names of steps - Names ideally reflect the steps (or stages) in your company's approval process.
Condition to start - Steps can be ready to be started on different conditions. Either a step can start when a previous step is 'ready', or it can start in parallel with a previous step. The first step's condition is set: an asset needs to be placed on the canvas for that step to be ready to start. Steps can only start when you've added at least 1 approver.
Auto-start - By selecting 'Auto-start', that approval step will start automatically when its conditions to start are established (for instance: the previous step is ready)
Minimum criteria to be 'ready' - A step is considered 'Ready', when sufficient approvals are obtained. A step can have one of the following 'ready' criteria:
"Minimum: All invited" - This mean a step is ready when all the invited approvers have approved the asset, or
"Minimum: 1 approval" - This means a step is ready when at least one invited approver has approved the asset. So even if a second approver is still pending, you can already move forward.
Throughput time - When started, a step is configured to take a certain amount of days before it's due.
Eligible approvers - For some steps, you may want to limit the users that can be invited for it. You can do so, by marking them (or those teams) as eligible approvers. That way, only those members or teams can be invited - nobody else.
What is an approver note?
To provide approvers with some context, you can leave them a note. An approver note is written once (per step), and is distributed to the approvers with their email notification. That same note can also be read, when an approver opens an approval request, or when he clicks on 'Read details'.
Please note, that mentioning (@FrankSmith) will not trigger any notifications.
