Administering approval delegation

In the out-of-box system, ITSMA Service Management supports approval delegation for the following applications :

  • Change Management
  • Request Fulfillment
  • Service Catalog

To enable approval delegation for one of these applications, an Administrator must edit one of the application's security role records and select the Can Delegate Approvals option. Next, the Administrator must grant this security role to the operators who will be given approval delegation authority.

Note If you want to support approval delegation for an application that does not support approvals out-of-box, you must first enable approvals for the application. To enable approvals, see Enabling approvals.

Approval delegation never changes a delegate's original security role or operator record. Service Management only changes a delegate's approval groups in memory when the following conditions occur.

  • When the system notifies the delegate
  • When a delegate views or acts on an approval

By default, Service Management sends an email notification to the approval delegate when the following conditions occur:

  • A new approval delegation is assigned to the delegate
  • A new approval arrives in the approval owner's queue

Note Service Management also sends an email notification to the approval owner when a new approval arrives in the owner's queue. System Administrators can change the notification behaviors for approval delegation directly from the notification engine.

A delegated approval always retains its original operator assignment. Service Management records the delegate's actions separately from the owner in the following new fields:

Field name Label in approval record Description
approved.by Operator The name of the operator who acted on the approval.
approved.for Approved For The name of operator who delegated the approval.

Note Delegators and delegates can view these fields from the approval record and the approval log. However, in some cases, only a delegator may have the approval group necessary to view the records in the approval log. A delegate's temporary rights do not include viewing approvals in the log. In order to view approvals in the approval log, a delegate's application profile must include the required approval groups.