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Structuring Your Approval Process

The approval process in LINQ Employee Portal consists of two components, Approval Groups and Approval Hierarchies. This topic explains how to use each component to customize the approval process for your organization.

After reviewing this topic, refer to the following topics for assistance in creating and maintaining your approval groups and hierarchies (chains).

• Approval Group Setup

• About Approval Groups

• Creating an Approval Group

• Copying an Approval Group

• Assigning Job Codes to an Approval Group

• Assigning Approval Departments to an Approval Group

• Approval Hierarchy Setup

• About Approval Hierarchies

• Creating Approval Chains

• Copying an Approval Chain

Approval Groups (Parent)

Approval groups are basically groupings of like employees based on jobs.

An employee may fall into multiple approval groups (maximum 1 per job).  An employee’s job may technically qualify (i.e., be-a-match) for more than 1 approval group; however, the best possible choice/match will be selected.

When an employee’s job falls into multiple approval groups, LINQ EP will use the following logic to select the best possible approval group for that job:

1. Approval department, which is the most important because the approval department is the most detailed level in Alio

2. Job code

3. Location

To provide additional flexibility, LINQ EP combines the location with either the department or job code. The following list reflects each combination's level of importance; the lower the number, the higher the importance.

1. Location with department

2. All Locations with department

3. Location with Job

4. All Locations with Job

5. Location

6. All Locations

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Approval Hierarchies (Children of Approval Groups)

Approval hierarchies are the approval process used for an individual approval group.

Approval hierarchies are children of the approval groups, which are groups of employees formed by the employee’s jobs. When a hierarchy is built you assign that hierarchy to an approval group, which tells LINQ EP to process that group of employees through this approval hierarchy.  If an approval group does not have an associated hierarchy, the group of employees is not included in the approval process because LINQ EP does not know which approval process to use for that approval group.  

Approval hierarchies allow for multiple approvers at each level defined in the hierarchy.  When an approver at an individual level approves a request, the request is advanced to the next level of the hierarchy (it does not force all approvers at the approver level to approve the request).

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Approval Groups and Hierarchies Example

Refer to the following example when setting up your organization's approval groups and hierarchies.

1. Locations, Jobs, and Departments

2. Approval Groups

3. Employees

4. Results

Final Approval Groups — this is the proper way to view an approval group

Final Approval Hierarchies — this is the proper way to view an approval hierarchy

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