Approvals by Leader

Leaders can be added into user profiles within the Admin > Users section of the platform. Leaders can be helpful to add within users' profiles in order to denote managerial reporting lines, and can also be used within approval workflows.

When creating an approval workflow, Main Admins can mark Leaders as who the reviewers will be in a particular request. This means that when a user makes an approval request, their leader (as assigned against their user profile) is automatically populated as the reviewer.

This is a helpful feature for teams who require this sort of workflow or approval process, as it automates the process of setting up the correct reviewer and doesn't rely on the requester to manually assign the reviewer when making their request.

When creating or editing a workflow (in Admin > Workflows) you then have the option of selecting Direct Leader in the Which Reviewers field. This will populate the user's assigned Leader as the reviewer of their requests.

The Leaders option will still default to the Direct Leader of the requester, but that requester can opt to instead select their Leader's Leader or other Leaders in the chain (leader of leader of leader, etc). This is helpful if, perhaps, the requester's Direct Leader is out or is otherwise unable to review a request, since it gives requesters other reviewer options within their leadership team.

What happens if a Requester's Leader changes?

Under Admin > Settings > Workflows there is an option to select Auto-Reassign Pending Requests on Leader Change:

When selected on the platform, whenever a Leader is subsequently changed against a requester's user profile, the system will automatically re-assign any pending approval requests from the requester's former leader to the newly assigned Leader. This helps create efficiency so reviewers or Admins don't have to manually re-assign any pending requests to the new Leader.

An email will be triggered by the system to alert the new Leader of the pending approval.

(If the requester's Leader selection is removed from their user profile's Leader field, with no other Leader added in, the workflow will stay untouched.)

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