Change Management Approvals - Dynamic

Hi All!

I am currently building out our change management module in my sandbox environment. The business I work for has around 15 different CAB approval areas. A change requestor can select from 1 approver to up to all 15 if necessary to approve the change.

The issue I'm having is once selected, getting the approvals to go onto the change in parallel, so that each area can approve or reject the change at the same time as any other, in order to speed up the game change process.

I have tried creating separate workflows for each area that triggers when a change is updated to the status of “Awaiting Approval”, and the condition of the “CAB Approval Area” field being chosen. If this matches, an approval email is sent to the Change Approvers. 

This works fine if one area is chosen, but I cant see a way to create in one workflow, a dynamic way of checking which “CAB Approval Area” has been chosen, and send an approval email to each area for them to approve in parallel with each other.

I tried separate workflows for each area, but only one workflow triggers, as I'm assuming the trigger condition has been met for one, and it wont trigger for the other workflows as the condition isnt there anymore.

Does anyone have any experience with something similar, if so how did you get around it? Looking for any guidance on this.

Thank you in advance for any assistance!

Kind Regards

Patrick

You can use the Workflow Automator to handle this efficiently. Since your company has 15 different CAB approval areas, a change requestor can select anywhere from one to all 15 areas for approval. The goal is to make sure that all selected CABs can approve or reject the change at the same time, speeding up the process.

First, you need to configure the CABs in Freshservice. Go to Admin > User Management > CAB, and create groups for each approval area. Then, assign the right members to each group. This ensures that when an approval request is sent, it reaches the right people.

Next, set up a workflow in Workflow Automator. The trigger should be when a change request moves to "Awaiting Approval." Add conditions to check which CABs have been selected. For each selected CAB, configure an action to send an approval request. Make sure these approval actions are running in parallel, so that each CAB can approve or reject independently without waiting for others.

One important thing to note is that Freshservice processes one workflow per change request at a time. So, instead of creating separate workflows for each CAB, you should include all conditions and actions in a single workflow. This way, all necessary CABs will receive their approval requests at the same time.

Hi Tatereal,

Thank you for your reply, This was the answer fresh service support gave also. Unfortunately its just not a realistic approach, as the workflow is going to contain literal hundreds of condition nodes to check for a selected area given the amount of approval areas we have in the business. Also, the branching alone for the conditional nodes is going to be unmanageable moving forward if a change is ever needed in the workflow.

I believe parallel approvals is on the fresh service roadmap and a beta is due in May. I am currently waiting for that, and thats what fresh have suggested I do. I posted here hoping someone had come up with an ingenious way around this issue.

Thank you again for taking the time to reply