Approval workflow vs Approval feature
I would like to know how you are managing Approvals? When are you using the Approval feature (raising an Approval in a Task) VS using the Approval workflow in a Task? Pros and Cons of each?
We tend to use a sequence of tasks to manage multi-level of approvals, and the Approval feature for one step approval or documents feedback. I'm curious to know how other users are managing Approvals.
Thanks in advanced for sharing!
Hi Roxane Carrier we are not using approvals for documents in Wrike. As we have our documents in Sharepoint we use Wrike for work management and Sharepoint for documents.
What we are using is the approval in Wrike for finished tasks. So if somebody finishes a tas he sets it into status "Complete (veryify requested)". This rises an approval for the task creator automatically. If the task creator approves the task is set to Completed and with this finished. If the task creator declines the approval the task is set bet to in work to the assignee. This works very well as task creator and assignee at the end say the task is completed (or not).
Hi Roxane Carrier,
To keep our workflow consistent and clean, we only use workflow driven approvals. 95% of the time, there is a document that must be reviewed with the approval, so we add that document to the approval so the approver knows which file they should be reviewing in the task (since there are often other attachments in our tasks). This prevents team members creating random approvals without progressing through the necessary steps in the workflow, which will create questions in our weekly meetings...often with the following dialog:
emp A: "You just approved that last week..."
emp B: "Then why is this task still showing In Progress?"
emp A: "Oh...because I forgot to change the status...my mistake." 😄
Also, we sometimes have multiple approvals in our workflows. By keeping the approvals tied to the task status, we know which approval was conducted and when. Every team will have different needs, but this has worked well for us and how work is done in our organization. Cheers!
Thanks Sven Passinger and Trevor Tollefsbol for sharing.
I'm assuming that you both have multiple statuses that will raise an approval.
Do you always have the same 'approvers' assignee or it varies? For us it with depends on the project owner & stakeholders.
How do you automate this variation?
Our approval steps look like this:
Hi Roxane Carrier we mainly use the approval if the status of a task changes. So the thought is that the task creator must approve if the task is finished. As the task creator is something special in Wrike you can make in the workflow an automated approval and choose the task creator. For other kind of approvals (like some important decission during the work on a task) we do not have automated approval, but the assignee can start an approval by hand and choose approvers.