Grouped Approval Requests

Grouped Approval Requests provide a way to streamline notifications when multiple requests are made at the same time, and allow reviewers to respond to multiple requests at once, saving time and effort.

Grouped Requests are supported for the following workflow types:

• Resource/Asset Download Approval Workflows
• Resource/Asset Publish Approval Workflows
• Record File Approval Workflows

Grouped Download Requests

The Grouped Download Approval Request feature allows users with Preview permission to request download approval for multiple assets. It also allows reviewers to respond to multiple requests at once, which makes the approval process more efficient.

Users needing to download multiple assets have the ability to request files in the same form submission instead of requesting each one separately.

This feature can also be accessed from a user's Collection(s) and from search results within the platform.

Multi-Step Request and Download Process

When a Grouped Download Approval request is submitted, the platform automatically builds a multi-step process to:

• Request approval across different approval workflows a user belongs to (Step 1 below)
• Give a user the ability to download any selected assets that may have been pre-approved or auto-completed as part of this request, all in the same process (Step 2)

Step 1: Download Request for Selected Assets

Step 2: Bulk Download Approved Assets

Steps to Enable Grouped Downloads

Grouped Download requests are currently enabled by default for any Download Request Workflow and cannot be disabled. The feature applies to whatever folder(s) the Download Workflow has been applied to.

Grouped Asset Publish Requests

The Grouped Resource Publish Request feature allows assets that are bulk uploaded or bulk edited together via a Publish Approval process to be grouped together. Requesters can monitor their requests collectively as a group, or still as individual requests. Reviewers can also respond to multiple requests within a group all at once.

This feature applies to assets being added or edited from the same folder, or in some cross-folder bulk editing scenarios.

Steps to Enable Grouped Resource Publish Requests

The available notification options are:

• For the Requester:
  • Grouped Request submission confirmation - one email will be sent to confirm the items that have been requested and form this group request.
  • Grouped Request has been completed - the requester will receive an alert when all items in the group are completed. If 'Also send individual completed emails' is also enabled, the requester will receive both individual alerts as items are completed one by one, as well as a final completion notification.
• For Reviewer(s):
  • Grouped Request notification - one email will be sent to confirm the items that require review. Note this only applies to reviewers on the first stage of a staged workflow. Reviewers on subsequent stages will receive individual alerts as they are required to review items (if configured to receive those alerts).

Definition of what makes an Asset Publish Group

For Grouped Asset Publish Requests, a group is defined by either bulk upload or bulk edit scenarios when multiple assets are submitted for approval at the same time:

• Bulk Upload - if a user is submitting in batches within the same upload session, each batch may become its own group.
• Bulk Edit - for cross-folder handling, items will be grouped by each workflow template involved, so multiple grouped requests may be created from a single bulk submission.
• For either Bulk Upload or Bulk Edit, if any assets fail submit validation they will be excluded from the group, as they need to be submitted again.
• If only a single asset is sent for approval on either Bulk Upload or Bulk Edit pages, it will be excluded from the group logic.

Grouped Record File Approval Requests

The Grouped Record File Approval Request feature allows assets in a Multi Upload field in a record to be grouped together when they are requested for approval in bulk. Requesters can monitor their requests either collectively as a group, or still as individual requests. Reviewers can also respond to multiple requests within a group all at once.

Steps to Enable Grouped Record File Approval Requests

The available notification options are:

• For the Requester:
  • Grouped Request submission confirmation - one email will be sent to confirm the items that have been requested and form this group request.
  • Grouped Request has been completed - the requester will receive an alert when all items in the group are completed. If 'Also send individual completed emails' is also enabled, the requester will receive both individual alerts as items are completed one by one, as well as a final completion notification.
• For Reviewer(s):
  • Grouped Request notification - one email will be sent to confirm the items that require review. Note this only applies to reviewers on the first stage of a staged workflow. Reviewers on subsequent stages will receive individual alerts as they are required to review items (if configured to receive those alerts).

Definition of what makes a Record File Group

For Grouped Record File Requests, the definition of a group is dictated by what has been selected and then submitted via the Bulk Request action in the multi-upload field.

Reviewing Grouped Requests

Assets from any group request will also appear as single requests in the Requests tab of your Approvals List, but can also be reviewed in bulk via the more streamlined process below.

Review Grouped Requests from email notifications

A single consolidated email will be sent to the requester and reviewer(s) at the start of the process, and to the requester at the end, once all items have been reviewed.

Click the main link in these emails to be taken to the Group Approval Review Page.

Accessing your Grouped Requests in the Approval Request List

Assets can also be approved in bulk via your Approval Request List. Click on the Grouped Request tab and click on the name of the relevant Grouped Request:

This will open the Grouped Approval Review page and show all items that were requested.

Grouped Approval Review page

The Grouped Approval Review page is split into two main sections: Requests and Responses.

Requests

On the left of this page you can view all the items listed in the request. Actions available in this space include:

• Filter by request status (e.g. all Pending or Approved requests)
• Search for specific request names
• Select specific requests via checkboxes to apply response information in bulk or in batches
• Open individual requests to check each in more detail and review them individually
• Perform key actions like Download, Re-assign and Cancel
• View key information about each request (such as remaining Reviewers)

Responses

The right side of the page allows reviewers to:

• Input Comments
• Add an Approval decision (Approved or Declined)
• Add an Approved Until date (if applicable)
• Click Apply to Selected to add those details to the selected requests

Submitting your Response

Once you have added the needed responses, either in bulk or individually, click Submit & Continue, or Submit & Next (for individual responses). Your Grouped Approval Review page will automatically update to reflect the changes.

Reporting and Compliance

While bulk reviewing via the Group Review page makes things quicker and easier for reviewers, we understand it may not always be best practice. Concerns may include reviewers paying less attention to each individual asset or being less thorough in their review process.

To help monitor how your reviewers are using this feature, tracking is in place to note if users are reviewing one by one (either from the Approvals List, or individually from the Bulk Review page) or in bulk.

This information is available in:

• Workflow History - a Bulk Review column notes which responses were made singly or in bulk.
• Review Request Response section - responses will indicate if they were made via single review or bulk review actions:
  
   
• Data Reporting - for Workflow Response reports:
  • The Bulk Review column shows how responses were made ('Yes' if in bulk, 'No' if single, 'N/A' for unsupported record requests). Bulk Review can also be used as a filtering condition to see results that have all been made in bulk, or not.
  • A Bulk Response UUID column surfaces a unique ID that can be used as a condition to see what other requests were made at the same time by the same user.

* Please note that some terms used above, such as Workflows and Approvals, are customisable and may appear differently in your platform.