If you have been added to an approval workflow or are a senior member of your team you may be required to approve or decline approval requests.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• An overview of approval forms
• Approve or decline a request when I'm next in line
• Approve or decline a request ahead of my turn in line
• What happens next?
• Approve on behalf of another user in another workflow

 

 

An overview of approval forms

As an approver assigned to an approval workflow, you will encounter the following form for review when approving a recommendation for award, or for an RFQ to go to market.

 

Both forms are similar, however we will use the example of an RFA approval form here:

 

 

In the first two sections of the approval form, you can access information about the RFQ event where sourcing took place to find the recommended vendor, as well as a link to the recommended vendor's profile in Felix. You can click through to the RFQ detail itself to see all details available if you require.

 

NOTE: If a vendor was Manually Quoted, i.e. an organisation user received a quote outside Felix and responded on behalf of the vendor, you will be notified of this per the image below. 

 

 

In the next section of the approval form, you will see details from the RFQ around budget and financials, any Felix evaluations used to assess tenderers, and (as applicable) a link to the pricing schedule (bill of quantities) used by vendors in pricing the RFQ.

 

NOTE: Where a link exists to a Pricing Schedule, it will open the latest version (of the schedule / bill of quantities) that the recommended vendor submitted pricing for. From that page you can toggle between other versions that the vendor may have submitted pricing for, plus see side by side comparisons with other Vendors that submitted. See this article for more details.

 

Following the above details, you will observe your Organisation's questionnaire for the approval. These questionnaires are configured by Felix to meet your organisation's needs for approvals, and are completed by the user at your organisation who is recommending the vendor (or requesting an RFQ go to market, in the RFQ approval case).

Finally, there is the approvals section. See following sections below for more details on using this section to approve (or otherwise) an RFA or RFQ.

 

 

Approve or decline a request when I'm next in line

When it is your turn to approve a workflow, you will receive an email from Felix. Users can also send reminder emails in some circumstances, so this may prompt you with a link to log in to Felix and complete an approval request.

To approve or decline a request in Felix:

1. Navigate to My Tasks > Approval Instances
2. Click Show Filters
3. Select your name from the Filter Awaiting drop-down menu
4. Locate the instance that you would like to provide approval for
5. Hover over the ‌more icon beside the relevant approval instance
6. Select View from the drop-down menu
7. Review all the details provided
8. Navigate to the Requires Approval By section near the bottom of the page
9. Click the Approve or Decline button

If you decline the request you'll be required to provide additional comments visible to the requester and other approvers.

Approve or decline a request ahead of my turn in line

If you are part of an approval workflow, you will see it in your "My Tasks -> Approval Instances" page no matter whether you are next in line to approve or not.

If you have been discussing the approval with colleagues below you in the current approval route, you are able to approve on their behalf as a higher level approver in the same route. This essentially "Skips" them in the workflow. You will be prompted to add a comment to capture the discussion and reason for "skipping".

NOTE: Note that in multi-stage approvals, with multiple routes, this ability only applies to the current active route. This option as a higher level approver only applies to the current route you are in.

 

 

What happens next?

If you decline a request, the approval workflow is halted and will require a re-start of the entire workflow by the Requestor. An email will be sent to the requester letting them know to review their submission and resubmit once they have made corrections in line with the comments provided. 

If you have chosen to approve the request and are not the final approver, an email will be sent to the next approver(s).

If you have chosen to approve the request, and you are the final approver (on the final route for multi-stage approvals) an email will be sent to the requestor confirming the successful completion of the approval workflow. The requestor will now be able to finalise an Award in Felix for the chosen vendor.

 

Approve on behalf of another user in another workflow

Some users have visibility over all approval workflows and/or coordinate approvals or sourcing for entire projects or business units. In many of these cases, these users will have access to see all approval workflows in the Reports->Approval Workflows screen.

In case an approver is unavailable and an approval requires expediting, users can be granted the ability to respond to an approval request on behalf of an approver - in any workflow. This permission is granted at a global level for all approval routes.

 

Who can use this feature?: Users will need the Action Approval On-Behalf-Of Another User permission to perform the following action.

 

To approve on behalf of any user in any workflow:

1. Navigate to the approval instance
2. Confirm the user has had at least 24 hours to complete the request
3. Click the Approve or Decline button