Workflow-Based Approval Process Overview

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In Contract Management versions 12.0 and later, there is an approval process for the following types of documents: contracts, change orders, purchase orders, requests for information, and payment requisitions.

For each of these types of documents, a document owner must be specified. This can be done at the project level by right-clicking the project name and choosing Project Settings. In the Project Settings dialog box you can specify a default owner for each approval module. When set at the project level, each time one of these types of documents is created, the name of the document owner will automatically be entered in the Document Owner field. The document owner can also be selected when the document is created. Once the document owner is selected, only the Contract Management administrator, the project owner, or the document owner can select a different document owner.

Contract Management documents can be added by anyone who has the security privilege to add documents and access to the project. Documents can be approved by the Contract Management administrator, the project owner, or the document owner who is acting for any contact on the document review list.

Prerequisites for using the workflow-based approval process:

1. There must be companies for this project. See Add Companies and Contacts for more information.
2. There must be contacts for the companies and they must be linked to a user account. See Add Contacts for more information.
3. The contacts must have view, add, and edit rights for the project.
   • This is done in the Contract Management Administration Application when the user account is created. Log onto the Contract Management Administration Application, and click User Accounts to add a user account.
   • Once the user account has been created, in Contract Management you can change access rights by right-clicking on the project name and selecting Project Access. In the Project Access dialog box, click the Edit icon next to the user you want to configure. If the user is not listed for this project, click Add Users to this Project and select users to add to the project.
4. The contacts must have approval rights for the project.
   • Assign an access template to the user account. This is done in the Contract Management Administration Application on the User Accounts page.
   • Once the template has been assigned to a user account, you can change the approval rights by right-clicking on the project name and selecting Project Access. On the Project Access dialog box, click the Edit icon next to the user name to display the User Project Access dialog box, and set the approval rights. If the user is not listed for this project, click Add Users to this Project on the Project Access dialog box, and select the users to add to the project.
5. Contacts must have an approval limit that is greater than or equal to the amount of the document being created. If you select a contact for the reviewer list, and that contact does not have a limit greater than or equal to the amount of the document, an error message displays when you initiate the approval process. In that case, you must remove that contact name, and re-initiate the approval process.

   Note: If any of the preceding prerequisites are not met, the reviewer that you want to choose for the approval process will not show up on the list of reviewers from which you can select.