Sapling - Setting Up Your Approval Chains

This is an optional paid add-on. Reach out to [e-mail] to learn more.

What are Sapling’s Approval Chains?

Approval chains in Sapling help your team stay in top of changes that team members make to information for themselves or other team members.

You can create as many levels of approval as you need to have more control of the information that changes through time.

For example, if you're setting up a workflow for salary changes, you can create the following hypothetical workflow:

1. Salary changes must be requested by department leads
2. They must first be reviewed by the Head Of Finance
3. Then the CEO has final sign off before it goes into effect

Setting up an approval:

1. As an admin, Login to Sapling and click on  Administration Tools > Profile Setup 
2. Navigate to the All Fields or All Job Details tab, depending on the kind of data you want to configure with an approval chain
3. Create a new table if needed (by clicking on New Table) or click on the Manage Approvals link for an existing table
4. Select Approval Needed, and choose the best person to approve a change in the information.
5. To set up chained approvals, you have the option to specify an individual, or general Role (Ex: 2nd Level Manager, a Coworker like a Division VP, or a specific Permission Group).
6. Repeat step #5 as many times as needed. There is no limit to the amount of levels you can create in an approval chain. 
7. Adjust the expiration period, if needed. By default, change requests will remain open for 7 days. 
8. Click Save

Once an approval has been configured, all change requests to that table will need to be reviewed by the approver or permission group.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who can request a change?

A team member’s ability to request a change is informed by their permission. If they have View and Edit permissions for a data table (such as Role Information), then they will be able to request a change. 

The are 2 steps in the request change modal:

1. Setting approvers in the approval chain

   • This showcases who is part of the approval chain.
   • This step is visible only for Super Admins and Admin permission groups.
     • These 2 personas can add/remove the approvers in the approval chain regardless they are the requester or the approver of the request.

2. Review changes

   • This outlines the specific data that is being updated.
   • This step is visible to anyone requesting the change of data. 

How are approvers notified of a change request?

Approvers will see the following:

• An email informing them of the new request
• An alert on the Sapling Updates page under Information Updates
• An alert on the Sapling Dashboard under Pending Approvals
• An alert on the specific user's Profile or Job Details tab where the change has occurred