There are several ways to review the workflow and approve emails and documents.
- From your Home - My Approvals
- From the Documents list or the Client - Documents tab
- Via a Summary Notification
This article contains the following sections:
- Home - My Approvals (Pending Approval)
- Reviewing an Email or Document in Home - My Approvals
- Approver Requests Changes
- Approving an Email or Document from Home - My Approvals
- Sending a Draft Email
- Workflow Views in Document Lists
- Summary Notification
- Workflow for Incoming Emails
Home - My Approvals (Pending Approval)
In your Home, the My Approvals tab displays any emails or documents that are for your attention in the workflow process. It displays emails or documents with a workflow Status of "Pending Approval" and where you have been assigned as the Approver,
Home - My Approvals for Approvers
From your Home - My Approvals, select one or more email/document that you want to approve and click the Approved button in the tool bar.
The following example is the Home - My Approvals tab for an Approver with two documents waiting for approval.
Reviewing an Email or Document in Home - My Approvals
If you are the Approver, you can preview the email or document from the open drawer in your Home - My Approvals. If the email or document has been passed to you for changes, you can make any changes to a Draft in FYI email directly in the Preview pane, or you can edit a Word or Excel document to make changes.
Approver Requests Changes
If you are the Approver, you can request changes by setting the workflow Status in the drawer to "Changes Requested". The email or document will be removed from the approver's My Approvals.
A Comment is created automatically and pre-filled with a message that changes have been requested. This includes the name of user making the request and the name of the Owner to send the Comment to. You can add to the message in the Comment if required, or include additional people to notify.
Click the Comment button to send the Comment, or click Cancel to cancel the change. Refer to Comments and Notifications.
Approving an Email or Document from Home - My Approvals
From your Home - My Approvals, select one or more email/document that you want to approve and click the Approved button in the tool bar.
You can also select the email or document to display the drawer and preview it. When displaying a document from My Approvals, the tools at the top of the Preview pane include the Approve button so you can approve the document while previewing it.
When you approve an email or document, the Status is set as "Approved". The Activity section of the email displays the message "Status changed from Pending Approval to Approved" with the name of the person who made the approval.
A Comment is created automatically and pre-filled with a message that the document has been approved which includes the name of user making the approval and the name of the Owner to send the Comment to. Click the Comment button to send the Comment.
If you need to inform any other user(s) of an action to take when a document is approved or when changes are requested. use the Comments function. Refer to Adding Comments and Notifying Team Members.
Approved Email or Document is no longer included in your Home - My Approvals
When approving from Home - My Approvals, because these change the Status from "Pending Approval", the email or document will no longer be included in this tab. If you need to do anything (such as preview it, make any changes, add comments as notification to other users) make sure you do this before clicking Approved.
Sending a Draft Email
When checking a draft email (in your Home - My Approvals tab or any other list), after checking it is OK to approve, you would usually send the email from the tool bar or from the Preview pane (by clicking Send).
When you send an email, this automatically changes the workflow Status to "Approved". If you do this from your Home - My Approvals tab, the email is no longer included in this list.
Workflow Views in Document Lists
You can make any changes to the Status, Owner or Approver of an email or document from any other list by opening the drawer for the email or document and making changes in the Workflow section. This also allows you to approve and email or document by changing the status to "Approved".
The Documents list and the Client - Documents tab include the following default Workflow views:
- Workflow - Pend. Approval view has a filter set to show all documents with the Workflow Status of "Pending Approval".
- Workflow - Pend. Signature view which has the Status filter set as "Pending Client Signature".
Summary Notification
A Summary Notification process can be set up for your practice. This will send a scheduled notification to each of the relevant approvers, for example every 12 hours, with a summary of the number of emails and documents that person has outstanding for approval. Depending on your settings, this will also get sent as an email.
A Custom Message can also be added to the Summary Notification Process step if required.
The following is an example of the email that is sent. The Custom Message displays below the link.
The following is an example of the Notification that is sent.
The email includes a link that you can click to go directly to the Documents list automatically filtered to show only the emails and documents that are "Pending Approval" and filtered to show only those where you are selected as the Approver.
The link in the notification displays the Documents list automatically set to the "Workflow - Pend Approval" view which can then be sorted or filtered on the Approvers name.
Note: It will depend on the settings in the Custom Process whether or not the notification is sent only once (when the workflow is initially set), or if you receive further notifications if the documents are still pending approval,
For information on how an FYI Admin can set up the process, refer to Custom Processes using Views and Summary Notifications.
Workflow for Incoming Emails
Incoming emails include the workflow section in the drawer and the same workflow process can be used for received emails.
The allows your team, or a group of people, to work together to respond to any incoming client emails that are received. It allows you to check that no incoming emails are left without a response. An FYI Admin can set up a view that is filtered for emails and for specific workflows to display emails by workflow.