Specifying approvers for an approval workflow
When constructing an approval workflow, you add one or more approval activities to the workflow definition, thereby creating approval rules, and then configure those activities to define approvers for each rule. The entities that can be designated as approvers include manager of operation requestor, manager of operation target object, and manager of container that holds operation target object. It is also possible to select any particular user or group of users for the role of approver.
Extending the previous example, suppose you want the creation of user accounts to be approved by the manager of the Organizational Unit in which the accounts are going to be created. You can implement this scenario by adding an approval activity to the workflow and then using the Properties command on that activity to select the corresponding option on the Approvers Selection page.
For more information, see Configuring an Approval activity.
Configuring notifications for an approval workflow
You can configure approval rules to notify approvers or other interested parties of specific events that may occur in the approval process. For example, an approval rule can be configured so that the approvers defined by the rule receive a notification e-mail whenever an operation is requested that requires their approval. Other events to notify of include the completion of an approval task indicating that an approver has either allowed or denied the requested changes, the completion of the operation indicating that the requested changes have been applied, and the operation failure because of an error condition.
Approval workflow notification recipients
When configuring notification settings in an approval rule, you choose an event, and specify who you want to receive email notification of that event-notification recipients. A recipient can be any mailbox-enabled user or mail-enabled group. There are also a number of options allowing you to select recipients based on their role, such as operation requestor, approver, manager of operation requestor, or manager of operation target object. A single rule can be configured to notify of one or more events, with an individual list of recipients being defined for each event.
Approval workflow notification delivery
Along with an event to notify of and notification recipients, you can select delivery options. In addition to immediate delivery (which causes every occurrence of the event to generate a separate notification message), there is the scheduled delivery option for aggregating notifications. If you select the scheduled delivery option, all notifications about the event occurrences within a time period of your choice are grouped and sent as a single message. In this case, the message body is composed of the aggregated notifications about every single occurrence of the event.
Notification messages are routed for delivery by an SMTP service, such as that provided by Microsoft Exchange or Internet Information Services. The address and other parameters of the outgoing email server are specified as part of the notification settings on each approval rule.
