Note: This feature requires the Material Request & Approval module licensed at your site.
As with requester tasks, performing approver tasks entails finding and entering various information about the requested material—its chemical ingredients, the locations where it will be used and stored, any protective equipment required for its safe handling, and so on—in order to gather sufficient data for an informed decision to approve or reject the request. This decision is always entered in the request's final approver task.
Unlike requester tasks (which are all performed by the requester), each approver task can be performed by a different user. Any approver task can be assigned one or more responsible users and/or whole user groups; this can be a default setting for the task or changed by any user editing the approver task list of a specific request (see Assembling/Editing an Approver Task List). When the task is ready to be performed, its responsible users receive an automatic email informing them of the waiting task and providing a link to the request.
When you open an approver task list as a responsible user for one or more tasks, the tasks you have permission to perform are shown in blue. All unavailable tasks are shown in black; these are either assigned to other users or must wait for a prior task to be completed before they can be performed.
Note: While responsible users can perform only their assigned tasks, your site's MRAP administrators (see Site Settings) have permission to perform all approver tasks for any request.
To perform approver tasks:
Starting at the Material Request & Approval page (How do I get there?), do the following:
1. Open the Approver Tasks display of a request that is currently of an Open status (that is, it has been submitted and given an approver task list) by doing any of the following:
● If you have an automatic email containing a link to this request, click the link. (When you are selected as a responsible user for a task, you receive an automatic email when this task is available to be performed; this email contains a link to the request.)
● If the request has no approver tasks and you need to assemble this task list (see Assembling/Editing an Approver Task List), the Approver Tasks display opens after you complete the approver task list and open it to be performed.
● Use the MRAP search tool (see Searching Requests and Tasks for details) to search for it. When it appears in your search results,click its request number to open it. If this opens a Request Summary display, click Tasks in the upper right to open the Approver Tasks display.
The Approver Tasks display opens, showing the request's list of approver tasks. The tasks available for you to perform are shown in blue; all unavailable tasks are shown in black.
2. Read any instructions that appear beneath the Approver Tasks heading.
3. Click the first task for which you are responsible. (Tasks that are open to you will appear in blue.) You will be taken to an interface showing a display for performing the chosen task, as well as any consecutive tasks open to you. These tasks will now be considered “started.”
4. Perform each task; see MRAP Task Types for detailed procedures on performing each type of task.
Note: If you are called away before you have finished all the tasks, click the Save Draft button in the Actions toolbar to save your work.
5. When you have performed every task shown, click the Save & Complete button. Your task data will be saved and each task will be marked “completed.” You will then be taken back to the Approver Tasks page, which will now show a green check mark (
) icon for each completed task. (To make changes to any completed task, click the task name and click the Re-Open button to re-open the task for editing.) You may find that from a certain point in the task list, all tasks that follow are inaccessible; this means that the task before that point must be completed before the following tasks can be performed.
6. When the last task in the approver task list (i.e. the task that decides the final approval/rejection of the request) is completed, e-mail notifications will be automatically sent to the requester and to any other users associated with the request’s type (see Administration: Request Types), informing them of the decision. All data that has been entered for this request is contained in a Request Summary; click the Summary link in the upper right-hand corner of the display if you wish to view/print a request summary (see below) for this request.
