3. Request Approvals

The Service Request workflow has two levels of approval: financial and business. These approvals help ensure that requests adhere to the company's fiscal goals and business rules. The primary roles responsible for these approving requests are Financial Approvers and Business Approvers.

When a request is routed for financial or business approval, the selected financial approver or business approver can either approve or reject the request. If approved, the request moves to the Fulfillment state, where a fulfiller is assigned the item and becomes responsible for resolving the approved request, or the Fulfillment Queue state, where a fulfillment group owns the item until it is assigned to a fulfiller.

The path through the Service Request workflow is usually determined by the type of request. For example, requesting access to a building or network usually does not have any financial cost, but there is usually a business approval process to ensure that this person should be granted access rights. These requests require business approval but no financial approval.

In contrast, purchase requests require financial approval but probably not business approval. The purchase request for a new PC would require financial approval and have a purchaser defined.

Tip: To require both types of approval, set the values for the Requires Business Approval and Requires Financial Approval fields to Yes, and mark the fields as read-only for the project. This causes all requests to be routed for approvals.