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Approval Flow Using Timesheet Data

Kay Tarnowski

Good morning,

I'm still fairly new to Smartsheet (2 years) and have an approval automation question. I have a timesheet built in Smartsheet which collects time data from field-based foremen. On occasion, the workers reporting to a foreman have a need to work extra over time beyond what is normally approved. The extra hours input then need to be approved by a specific company manager.

The company managers need to be able to mass-approve overtime as much as possible. For instance, three people worked the overtime on Tuesday for task "A" and Bob Jones is the approver. The foreman will input the overtime, then I would like a single request for approval to generate that the foreman can add a "reason" to. So Bob Jones would receive a request to approve three people's overtime for task "A" on Tuesday. I have an approve Yes/No column next to the overtime hours, and would like it to change to "Yes" when Bob Jones signs off on the overtime.

How would I go about doing this? Appreciate any help if someone has time to advise. The company needs Smartsheet though convincing them of this is a little hard.

Thanks,

Kay

Kay Tarnowski

Site Administrator

Iron Range Construction LLC

500 Platt Avenue E

Nashwauk, MN 55769

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Andrée Starå

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/148825/approval-flow-using-timesheet-data

Hi, @Kay Tarnowski

I hope you're well and safe!

Welcome to the Community and the wonderful world of Smartsheet!

I have some questions before I can provide the best solution/advice.

Do you have a directory listing the approver for different projects?
Are all the requests collected in one sheet or split by project?
If one approver has 10 different overtime requests, would you want them split by approver, task/project, or something else?

I hope that helps!

Have a fantastic day!

Andrée Starå | Smartsheet Expert Consultant and Partner / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Kay Tarnowski

Hi @Andrée Starå ,

Thank you for the welcome!

There is a directory (not uploaded yet) of approvers by area of work effort.

The request can occur on different input sheets (over 600 employees) that are divided by supervisor.

If one approver has 10 requests, I would want them all to go on one list. High priority to minimize the time required to approve these. The sheet looks like this:

I hope you are well and safe also!

Thank you,

Kay

Kay Tarnowski

OK, it looks like I can make cell linkage work for this ? The only catch is having a sheet which will contain inbound links? So an approval sheet for each week with the approver having access to approve the line items will be needed? Very open to suggestions if I'm looking at this wrong.

Andrée Starå

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/519921#Comment_519921

Ok.

Have you explored using a Report with the Current User feature or the Premium App, Dynamic View.

Both of those solution could show the different approvers their requests as long as we have something that identify that them as a contact in a column.

Does that make sense?

Would that work/help?

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Kay Tarnowski

One of the issues is that the approvers don't want to come to the main sheet and then have to look for the items that require their approval. They want me to produce a simple sheet that will show only the times they need to approve. I made this up to try:

I can then link approval status back into the timesheet:

This is a little bit clunky, but may be where I land for right now.

Andrée Starå

Got it. That's what you would get with my options. A clear list of what needs to be approved.

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Kay Tarnowski

Thank you, I will do some exploring.

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