Multiple Approvals

Stephanie Wood

I'm looking for a clean, efficient way to handle multiple approvals for a row which contains comments without having a large number of columns. Up to 20-30 different people will be reviewing, sometimes 5+ for an individual row.

First thought was to create child rows and add the approvals there and I would only have to have the reviewer and approval status column. The parent row contains comments and I don't want to have to copy those comments over and over for each reviewer every time and I don't want to have them required to log into sheet to see the comments.

I can't add multiple reviewers in one cell because the first person to approve or decline prevents others from answering.

I tried setting up individual Reviewer and Approval columns but that is going to get real messy if I have a larger number of people reviewing one item (reviewer 1/reviewer 1 status, reviewer 2/reviewer 2 status, etc).

I can't seem to figure out the cleanest way to do this without copying the comments multiple times.

Does anyone have advice on how best to accomplish?

Andrée Starå

Hi Stephanie,

I can think of a few ways to set this up. Here are a few ideas.

• One contact column and status column for each that you then could hide. Collect the status from all in another column with a formula with the JOIN function.
• One contact column and status column for each that you then could hide. Add checkboxes for each contact and then add a formula that checks them when they approve.

Would any of those options work/help?

Can you maybe share some screenshots? (Delete/replace any confidential/sensitive information before sharing) That would make it easier to help. (share too, [email protected])

Have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

Stephanie Wood

Thank you, hiding the columns  and indicating elsewhere makes sense.  I will likely try scenarios around that to see how it works out.  

Andrée Starå

Excellent!

Happy to help!

Let me know what you decide.

Best,

Andrée

Kari Barratt

Hello, I'm looking at the same solution for our workflow process, we have multiple columns due to how the approval work flow is created and it has expanded the sheet and makes it difficult to keep track of where the approval is waiting etc. What formula can be used for the checkbox that is mentioned above?

Thanks,

Kari