Hi. My name is Harrison.

In this video, I will show you how to use Simplified Approvals to support hierarchical workflows, including the ability to interact with group-level plans.

Simplified approvals:

• Provide the ability to align approvers with the Cost Object hierarchy while allowing flexibility to skip levels
• Support group-level interactions where Group Cost Object Owners can submit, approve or return their group-level budget instead of interacting with individual Cost Objects
• Display only the Cost Objects a user has access to on the Status page
• Reduce the number of email notifications when plans are submitted, approved, or returned

Simplified Approvals support a planning process that engages multiple levels of the organizational hierarchy. For example, if your Department hierarchy included multiple levels, but you wanted a flatter approval workflow, you can configure the Approval Hierarchy to skip certain levels, so that the Departments within that skip node roll-up to the next level Owner.

In this example, Group E, Group F and Group H are skip nodes. The Departments within those groups would be approved by the next level Owner. For example, Department D and Department E’s plan would be approved by Group B’s Owner.

As an Admin user, you can start the upgrade process while you have active plans. Click Start Upgrade from the banner to start the upgrade process.

In the Cost Object Permissions page, set up the approval hierarchy. Select to view the table as a Hierarchy or a List. The Hierarchy view shows the latest published Cost Object hierarchy, while the List view shows all users assigned to any Cost Object, including historical Cost Objects that are no longer in the latest published version. The system uses your existing Cost Object Permissions to make a best-guess at aligning your current permissions to the new approval hierarchy.

Using the Hierarchy view, assign users as an Owner or Viewer to each level in your Cost Object hierarchy by clicking the Edit icon and selecting the username(s). Owners have Edit & Submit permission for that Cost Object-level, including any children Cost Objects, while Viewers have view-only permission.

To skip a level in the approval workflow, do not assign an Owner to that level in the hierarchy. All children Cost Objects will roll-up to the next level in the hierarchy where an Owner is assigned. In this example, Group E’s Owner is left blank to indicate that this is a skip level. Group E’s departments will be reviewed by Group B.

Once you're done setting up your approval hierarchy, click Complete Upgrade in the banner. The hierarchical approval workflow will take effect immediately across all plans regardless of plan state. Any further updates to Cost Object Permissions are reflected immediately.

Note that you can cancel the upgrade at any time by clicking Cancel Upgrade in the banner. You will lose any changes in Cost Object Permissions and will revert to the current published permission set.

Once you’ve completed the upgrade, the Status page UI will update to reflect the hierarchical approval workflow.

As an Admin user, you can view all the cost objects within your plan. When a plan is opened, all Cost Objects start at Version 1 and their status is set to Not Started.

Navigating to Department D’s plan, you can edit the plan, which will automatically create a Version 2.

Switching back to the Status page view, you can see Department D’s status is now In Progress and Version 2 includes Unsubmitted Changes.

Submitting Department D’s plan will submit Version 2 to be reviewed. Version 2’s changes are immediately visible at the top-level plan.

Since Group E was a skip node, Department D’s plan is submitted to Group B’s Owner and Group B’s status changes from Not Started to In Progress. Department Owners can also submit Version 1 of their plan if no additional changes are required.

When a plan is submitted, an email notification is sent to the Owners of the immediate parent.

Let’s sign in as Group B’s Owner. The Status page will only show the Departments that the Owner has access to. From this view, Group B’s Owner can see that Department D and Department E have submitted changes and Group D’s status is seen as Not Started.

Group B’s owner can approve departments individually or submit the group plan. Submitting a group plan auto-approves all unapproved child Departments and notifies owners of the approved children.

Since Group D has not submitted changes, the Version 1 plan of each of its departments get approved.

Group B’s status changes from In Progress to Submitted.

Next, let’s sign in as Group A’s Owner, who is the next level approver for Group B. Group A’s status is now In Progress because Group B submitted their group plan for review. Group A’s Owner can approve or return this plan.

Returning the plan would notify Group B’s owner and update the plan status from Submitted to Returned.

When a plan is returned, an email notification is sent to the owners of the immediate parent in addition to notifying owners of the returned Cost Object.

Note: Returning a group plan does not remove the submitted changes from the plan. Department D’s version 2 is still included in the plan. Changes are only removed when a version is returned to the lowest level.

Let’s again sign in as Group B’s Owner to review the plan status.

Group B’s Owner can now determine which Departments require further updates. Returning Department D’s plan removes Version 2’s changes from the plan and rolls back to the last approved version which would be Version 1. Department D’s status changes from Approved to Returned.

Group B’s Owner can also return Department E’s plan.

Since Department E did not submit any changes, no changes are removed from the plan. Department E’s status changes from Approved to Returned.

Department D and Department E Owners can resubmit their changes for review. Their status will not change from

Returned until an updated plan is submitted.

That’s a quick walk through of the Simplified Approvals feature. Thanks for watching!