General Approval Settings

This section provides configuration options for the approval workflow and request process in your organization.

This setting allows you to set the number of days between reminder emails being sent to your approver. For example, if the first request email is sent to an approver on Monday, and this value is set to 3, a reminder email will be sent 72 hours later on Thursday, reminding the approver to review the approval request.
Defaults to 3.

This value limits the total number of emails sent to a user when they are an approver in a request.
The first email is counted in this total, and after the total number of emails sent—including reminders—reaches this amount, no further emails will be sent to that approver.
A value of 0 means no emails will be sent to any users for approval requests, whether it is the first email or a reminder.
This value is checked each time an approval request is reviewed to determine if reminder emails need to be sent. Therefore, changing it will immediately affect all in-process emails.
Defaults to 5.

The reminder email days back-off allows you to send reminder emails with increasing delays between each email.
The value set is the number of days added to each consecutive reminder email. The values are compounding.
For example, with a reminder email days value of 3 and a back-off value of 1, reminder emails will be sent 3, 7, and 12 days after the request is submitted.
Defaults to 1.

This setting only counts business days (M-F) between reminder emails being sent.
Disable this option to ignore weekends and use calendar days only.
Defaults to True.

Enabling this option allows a user to pre-approve an upcoming request in a step that has not yet been started in the approval workflow. In effect, if they are an approver in an approval step that has not yet been routed for approval, they may pre-approve the request ahead of time.
Disabling this option will require all previous approval steps in sequential order to be processed and completed first.

Enabling this option requires an approver to enter a comment or note when they are approving an approval request.
Disabling this option allows an approver to approve a request without any comment or note.
Defaults to False (User not required to add a comment when approving a request).

Enabling this option requires an approver to enter a comment or note when they are denying an approval request.
Disabling this option allows an approver to deny a request without any comment or note.
Defaults to True (User is required to add a comment when denying a request).

The string entered here is attached as a prefix when a request number is displayed within FTE Tree.
For example, a value of 'R' on request #134 will be displayed as 'R134'.
This value is optional, and you may leave it blank for no prefix.

You may enter an integer value here to pad the request number to a specified number of digits.
Example: A value of 4 will pad the sequential request number to 4 digits, resulting in 'R0134'.
This value will automatically increment if your sequential request number reaches a new number of digits.
Set to 0 for no padding to be applied.
If the maximum number of position versions exceeds your setting, this value will be automatically updated unless the setting is equal to 0.

Enabling this option will include only active organization users in any newly created approval requests.
If the option is enabled and the inactive user is the only approver in a particular step, it may result in an auto-approval for that step.
Otherwise, if disabled, inactive users will be added to new approval requests and will require an approval override or substitution of the approver.
Defaults to False to minimize the risk of auto-approvals.

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Updated: Feb. 25, 2024