Conditional Approval & Approver Automation

vzarzycki

Hi - I've been trying to come up with the best way to implement a process into Smartsheet and can't really come up with an ideal method. Hoping someone can give me an idea or point me in the right direction.

We have a process where a user submits an intake item and then it goes to a general group for them to review/update info and then for them to mark it as approved. Not really relevant - but using Dynamic View for this which has been pretty cool.

After the reviewers mark an item as approved, we want to mark the item as conditionally approved and then alert 2 users that the item has been approved and they have 3 days to object before it gets marked as fully approved.

So really 2 challenges here:

First - How do I set it up so that the item will automatically flip to approved after 3 days? I was thinking of doing an automation based off of a calculated value that counts the days.

Second - How do I set up the conditional approver process? Do I use a workflow and assign both of the approvers? Ideally, it would be an email alert with a link they can click that will mark the item as ON HOLD - PENDING DISCUSSION or something to that effect.

Appreciate any help/guidance! Thank you!

Julie Fortney

Here's what I'm thinking:

Workflows:

1. Create an approval workflow to your first round of approvers.
2. When one of them marks it Approved, record a date in the Date Conditionally Approved column.
3. When that date is recorded, trigger an approval workflow to your 2 final approvers.
4. Actually a formula: Date to Mark Approved if No Final Response is the Date Conditionally Approved plus 3.
5. Create a "when a date is reached" workflow to trigger on the Date to Mark Approved if No Final Response with the condition that the Final Approval column is blank. If blank, update the cell to Approved.

That's a quick rundown - let me know if you need more detail!