Covering Approvals When an Approver is Out of Office

Lab Admins and named approvers can now create approval delegation rules so requests don't get stuck when people are out of office. For the dates you choose, your delegate can approve requests on your behalf.

A delegate only covers custom approval workflow steps that directly name an individual as the approver. Steps assigned to an Approval Team or to a budget's owner aren't covered. Purchase Order approval delegation is also not yet supported. See Which approvals a delegate can cover below for more details. 

Who can set up Approver Delegates?

• Lab Admins can add, edit, and delete delegates for any approver in their lab. 
• Lab Members assigned to specific approval workflow steps can add, edit, and delete their own delegates. They can't create or edit delegates for other users. 

Managing Approver Delegates

1. Navigate to Lab Settings > Approvals

   
    

2. Scroll to the Approver Delegates section at the bottom of the page and click Add new delegate. 
    

   

    

3. Choose the Main Approver. If you're not a Lab Admin, only your name will be displayed here. 
4. Choose the Delegate Approver. This can be any member of the lab. 
5. Pick the Start and End dates. The delegate will be allowed to approve requests from the start date through the end date. 
6. Click Save.

To change or remove a delegate, click the edit or delete icon on that row. Removing a delegate will not affect any approvals they already made. 

What happens while a delegation rule is active

• The delegate can approve requests waiting on the main approver, including requests that were already waiting when the delegation started. 
• The main approver can still approve too. Whoever acts first completes the step. 
• The approval history shows who acted, for example "Louise on behalf of Fern." This history remains on the request after the delegation ends. 

• The delegate receives approval request email notifications on behalf of the main approver. The main approver keeps getting them too. These emails are sent hourly, at the top of the hour. 
• When the end date passes, or the delegation rule is deleted, the delegate can no longer approve on behalf of the main approver. 

Which approval steps a delegate can cover

A delegate can approve any request approval step that explicitly names the main approver. 

A delegate can't approve:

• Steps assigned to Approval Teams: Anyone else on the team can approve instead. 
• Budget steps. This includes budgets owned by the main approver. To cover these, make an Approval Team the budget's owner.
• Purchase Order approvals. Delegates currently only cover Request-level approvals. 
• Approvals the main approver is only covering for someone else. If Fern covers for Rowan, and Louise covers for Fern, Louise can't approve for Rowan.