How to manage multiple concurrent approvals for one row

I need to get anywhere from 1 to 4 approvals for an attachment in one row. I want the request to go out simultaneously to all reviewers.

the Approval workflow seems to require consecutive approvals - not good for my use case.

I changed to using an update request. All approvers are added to one “assigned to” field and there are 4 blank response fields with drop downs. The update request contains all 4 fields and they are asked to put their response in a blank field. I use a formula to count up the responses until they are all in and then it sends me a notification that the approvals are complete.

this works ok until someone is late with their approval. The workflow sends a reminder to everyone in the Assigned To field, even if they have responded.

Any thoughts on how to better manage multiple concurrent approvals on one row?

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Accepted answers

Andrew Stewart

Hi Pam,

How about four different Approver fields as well as four different response fields. You would need to configure four different update requests, and could also configure targeted reminders to approvers that have not filled in their response field in a timely fashion.

Regards,

Andrew

All comments

Andrew Stewart

Hi Pam,

Regards,

Andrew

BrianBosché

Hi @Pam Grant,

You should try out proofing! Proofing allows you to upload an attachment and request feedback from as many people as you like, even if they are not shared to the sheet or in your Smartsheet account. They can comment with annotations directly on images and PDFs, and you can even track responses.

https://help.smartsheet.com/learning-track/smartsheet-advanced/proofing

I hope this helps!

Brian

Pam Grant

@Briana White

Thanks for the suggestion. Proofing has great potential but falls a little short for me. The limitation of pdf and image files makes this unavailable for my task because we also need to upload word documents.

I will take a look at 4 separate approver and approver response fields. I didn't think I could have more than one of these on a row so this might do me very well!

Pam

James Carter

@Pam Grant could really use your help on the multiple approver set up - I need to set up 3 separate approvers and 3 separate response fields. Could use you expertise. Thanks in advance for your help!

Pam Grant

Hi James

I'm not an expert but I'm glad to share my experience. In my use case, the approvers review concurrently and all must reply before we move forward.

Set up 1 column for "Status" and 3 columns for Contacts [Reviewer 1] [Reviewer 2] and [Reviewer 3]

Create an approval workflow for each Reviewer #:

Trigger: When rows are added or changed and "Status" changes to "Sent for Concurrent Approvals"

Conditions: Where Reviewer # is one of "Blank"

Action: Request an approval.

..Send to Contacts in a cell [Reviewer #]

..Save Response in [Reviewer # approval]

I set the Approve/Decline to send me an alert as they reply. It includes fields for the reviewers names and their approval decisions so I see at a glance if all approvals are in or if I need to wait for more. (Alternatively, I could skip this alert and create a formula to watch for all replies to come in and then trigger an alert)

I could set up some more automations at this point to change the status once all the reviews are in but right now I am moving them manually to the final stage. My statuses are based on if the content is 1) approved, 2) approved with changes or 3) declined. Once I manually update the Status column, it triggers a "request update" workflow to send specific columns, attachments and comments to the submitter. (Note: I use Request Update because I learned that Alerts will not include attachments unless the attachment is the trigger to send the Alert).

Here is a picture of my reminder if approvals run late:

Does that help?

Pam Grant

Hi @James Carter - sorry I didn't @mention you in my reply, above. In case you didn't see my response, I'm @mentioning you, now. :)

BrianBosché

@Pam Grant We will be supporting Document Proofing for Word docs and 50+ other file types later this summer, so this should help in your use case. You could also send them out as a PDF if the multiple approval route gets too complex, and then allow them to download the final completed word doc from attachments.

Pam Grant

Thanks, @BrianBosché ! Word and 50+ other file types will be awesome! PDF doesn't help me at all, sorry.

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