I. Overview

Sanplex provides a customizable Approval Workflow feature. You can flexibly design approval flows to match your business processes, including approval nodes, approvers, approval roles, CC recipients, and conditional branches.

Sanplex also supports advanced approver selection and workflow controls, such as multi-level managers, initiator self-approval, initiator-selected approvers, previous-node-selected approvers, percentage-based approvals, opinion collection, removing approvers, as well as rollback, transfer, initiator withdrawal, and required approval comments.

Sanplex unifies project approvals and workflow approvals into a single Approval Workflow capability.

II. Entry

In the left Admin navigation, go to Feature Configuration > Approvals (approval permission must be granted by a system administrator). Here you can configure Approval Roles, Project Approval Workflows, and Workflow Approval Workflows.

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Sanplex consolidates project approvals and workflow approvals into the Approval Workflow feature.

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III. Create an Approval Workflow

After entering the Approvals page, click Create Approval Workflow to add a new workflow, or use the action buttons on the right side of the list to edit an existing one.

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On the creation page, enter the workflow name, type, and description.

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After clicking Save, you will return to the list page and see the newly created approval workflow.

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IV. Design an Approval Workflow

In the list, click Design Workflow from the action buttons on the right to open the design page.

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A newly created workflow includes three default nodes: Initiate, Approve, and End.

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Click any node to configure it. The following example shows configuration of a CC node, where you can configure CC recipients:

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• Initiator selects: The initiator selects recipients manually on the approval initiation page.
• Specified user: CC a specific user.
• Role: CC the users in an approval role maintained in Approvals > Roles.
• Department manager: The manager/owner of the department in Sanplex’s department structure.

Below is an example of configuring an approval node:

1. Set Basic Information

Maintain the node title and node type.

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Title: The name of the approval node. Approval Node Type:

• Manual approval: Approvers must manually click Approve or Reject.
• Auto-approve: Typically used when a branch has no approver configured.
• Auto-reject: Typically used when a branch has no approver configured.

2. Set Approvers

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Approver Type:

• Initiator selects: The initiator selects approvers on the initiation page. (You can allow any user, or restrict the selection by role/department/position.)
• Initiator (self-approval): The initiator approves the request.
• Role: All users in the selected role review together (roles can be configured in Admin).
• Position: All users in the selected position review together (positions can be configured in Admin).
• Department manager: The manager/owner of the initiator’s department reviews.
• Direct manager: The initiator’s direct manager reviews (direct manager can be configured in Admin user profiles).
• Multi-level managers: Multiple levels of managers review; the end level can be set to the top manager, or the 2nd/3rd/4th/5th level manager.
• Selected by previous node: Approvers are selected by the approver(s) of the previous node (not available for the first node).
• Execution role: Roles of the execution associated with the approval object, including Product Owner, Test Owner, Release Owner, Execution Owner.
• Product role: Roles of the product associated with the approval object, including Product Owner, Test Owner, Release Owner, Feedback Owner, Ticket Owner, Requirement Reviewer.
• Project role: Roles of the project associated with the approval object, including Project Owner and Project Stakeholders.

3. Configure Actions and Permissions During Approval

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Transfer: After transfer, another person approves. Single-select only.

Rollback (Send Back): You can roll back to any prior node (including the initiator).

• Approve in workflow order: After the rolled-back node is approved, the workflow continues to the next node.
• Resume from the current approval node: After the rolled-back node is approved, jump back to the current node for approval.

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Add Approvers: Supports adding nodes/approvers before a node, after a node, or adding people to the current node.

• Add before: Insert a node before the current node. Multiple approvers are supported; you can configure multi-approver rules. Other settings follow the current workflow.
• Add after: Insert a node after the current node. Multiple approvers are supported; you can configure multi-approver rules. Other settings follow the current workflow.
• Add to current node: Not shown when the current approval flow has only one approver.

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Allow initiator withdrawal during review: If selected, the initiator can withdraw while this node is under review.

4. Set CC Recipients

You can select the CC scope. Recipient restrictions follow the same rules as approver restrictions.

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5. Configure Approval Rules

Here you can configure multi-approver rules and whether approval comments are required.

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Multi-approver mode:

• All must approve (approved only when everyone approves)
• Any one can approve (approved when any one person approves)
• Percentage-based approval (approved when the approval percentage threshold is met)
• Collect opinions (result = approved): Used mainly to collect input; results do not block downstream routing.

Note: If All reviewers must complete review is not selected, the node completes once the calculation threshold is met. If selected, the workflow waits for all reviewers to finish before moving to the next node, regardless of intermediate results.

You can also click the plus (+) icon between nodes to add new nodes or branches:

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Conditional branch: Only one branch is selected to continue. Priority is evaluated from left to right. If none of the left branches match, the workflow follows the rightmost default branch.

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Parallel branch: Multiple branches can proceed simultaneously. Any branch whose condition is met will be executed, and the default branch always executes.

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V. Use Approval Workflows in Projects

After configuring approval workflows, you can use them in a Waterfall project.

Go to a Waterfall project’s Settings > Approvals to associate approval objects with approval workflows:

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The approval objects listed here are the review objects under Waterfall Project > Reviews (review objects can be customized in Admin). Even if a review object is not associated with an approval workflow, it will follow a built-in minimal default workflow (system-provided and cannot be deleted).

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After the association is configured, you can initiate an approval workflow under Waterfall Project > Reviews:

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After selecting a review object, Sanplex loads all approval nodes configured in the workflow bound to that object. If the workflow uses Initiator selects, approvers must be chosen manually.

After initiating a review, you can click View Approval Progress on the list page to monitor the workflow:

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• Blue nodes indicate In Progress approvals. 图26
• Green nodes indicate Completed approvals. 图27

When an approval reaches a node, email notifications can be sent to the node’s approvers and CC recipients:

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In Dashboard > Pending > Reviews, you can view all approval items pending your review:

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VI. Use Approval Workflows in Workflows

If you select Workflow Approval as the approval type, the configured approval workflow can be used in workflow scenarios.

1. Configure Workflow

When creating a new workflow, you can enable the approval feature directly.

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For an existing workflow, you can enable approvals via approval settings in the advanced editor.

If the workflow configurator is not a super admin, the Approval Settings permission must be granted.

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After enabling approvals, you can configure the initiation page and approval page in the UI designer:

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When enabling approvals, check for duplicate fields/actions. If duplicates exist, follow the on-screen guidance.

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After enabling approvals, default fields, actions, and labels are added:

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Related settings for Initiate, Withdraw, and Approve:

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After action configuration is complete, the approval feature is ready to use.

2. Extend Built-in Pages

If the list contains too many records, you can further configure fields on the initiation and approval pages.

Approval progress is consistent with project approvals.

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3. Use Approvals

From both list and detail pages, you can initiate, approve, and withdraw.

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