Concepts

Tasks

Settings

Sending a Work Order for Approval

Your site’s approval settings determine if work orders require approval. If approval is required, you might need to send the document to be approved before you can report activity, create requisitions, purchase orders or pick lists, schedule, or close the work order.

Work order approval can consist of a single- or two-step process, depending on your organization’s policies. Work orders can be approved as a single document, or they can require a separate approval step for requirements.

If a single-step process is used, approving the work order approves both the work order and all of its requirements: both the work that is being done and any requirements that have to be purchased to complete it.

If the two-step process is used, the work and purchases are approved separately. The first step is approving the work. Once the work has been approved, a separate approval request is created for each of the work order’s requirements with a fulfillment method of purchase. If you select the two-step process for work orders, APM automatically sets requisitions as requiring approvals.

To Send a Work Order for Approval

1.	From the Site window, select the Work Management view, Work Orders tabs, and then open the work order that you want to have approved.

2.	From the Work Order menu, select Send for Approval. The Send for Approval dialog is displayed.

3.	Depending on your site settings, you can approve the work order and its requirements together (for example, material purchases) or you might need to send the requirements for approval separately:

•	If the work order and requirements are approved together, select the appropriate approval route.

•

If a two-step work order approval process is used, select the approval route for approving the work in the Approval route box. To change the selected route for each requirement, select the line and press F2. The Approval Route box can then be edited. Select the approval route from the list. Only valid approval routes for requisitions will be listed.

4.	Enter a comment, if you wish. Requester comments are displayed in the site’s Approvers view, Requests tab, as well as in the Approval Request window in the Request Info tab.

5.	Select whether or not email notification is required:

Setting Name

Description

Notification

Select whether or not the approval request’s originator should be notified by email when the approval route is completed. Depending on the site’s settings, the originator might be either the originator of the document being sent for approval (for example, the planner listed on the work order) or the employee who is sending the approval request. The name of the person considered to be the originator is shown in this section. To have APM automatically send an email to the originator once all approvers have reviewed the request, select Yes, send an email when the approval process is complete.

6.	Click Send for Approval. The approval request is sent to the first approver on the approval route(s) selected, and the document’s status is changed to “Waiting for approval”.

Note: If you have sent a work order for approval and one or more of the planned items requires a request for quotation (RFQ), the work order is not sent to the approvers until the RFQ process is complete. If the process of obtaining and analyzing bids is taking too long, you can release the work order for approval before the process is complete. The approval is based on the estimated cost of the resources. See Releasing a Work Order for Approval.