Workplace Services / Hoteling / Business Process Owner

Defining Approval and Notification Parameters

By running the Define Approval and Notification Parameters task, the business process owner can control whether or not approval is required for booking rooms, how the system notifies users of their bookings, and how it notifies approving managers of items to approve. Note that the approval and notification parameters are set for the application as a whole, and not for specific users, departments, or security groups.

If you define that approval is required by setting the ApprovalRequired option to Yes, be sure to do the following:

set these options to control how the system handles approvals:
- ApproveDays
- ActionApproveExpired
- UserApprovalExpired
- SendEmailToApprovers
run the Define Department Approving Manager task so that you can specify approving managers for departments.
review the Hotel Bookings Without Approval security group . You may want to set some employees as having the ability to book rooms without approval. For information, see Assigning Users to Hoteling Security Groups.

If you define that approval is not required by setting the ApprovalRequired option to No, you can skip the others parameters, but you should still review the SendEmailToOccupiers option, as this controls general notifications, not just those pertaining to the approval process.

For each parameter, you can see a brief description of its function.

Approval Parameters

The following options control the approval process:

ApprovalRequired: For the application as a whole, controls whether or not an approval will be required for booking rooms. Although this option applies to the application as a whole, you can use the hoteling security groups to exempt some users from having their bookings approved. Additionally, each booking is associated with a department. If you establish that approval is required, you must specify an approving manager for each department so that the system can route the booking to the appropriate personnel for approval.
SendEmailToApprovers: This option determines if the application sends an email to notify to the department's approving manager that a booking is in their queue for review. If set to Yes, when booking require approval, the system will search for the approving managers defined for the departments assigned to the bookings, and will notify them that bookings are pending for approval. If this option is not set, approvers must regularly run the Approve Bookings task to see the bookings in their queue.

To ensure that an approving manager reviews a booking within a reasonable time frame and that a booking does not get delayed in an approval queue, you can additionally set the following options. These options specify the approval turn-around time, and the actions that the system should take if an approving manager does not review a booking within this time frame.

ApproveDays: Determines the number of days that an approver has to approve or reject the booking. Enter a numeric value.
ActionApprovalExpired: Controls the action that the system takes in case the approving manager does not approve or reject the booking within the time frame specified in the ApproveDays option. The possible actions are: Approve, Reject, Notify. By setting the option to Approve or Reject, you are enabling the system to automatically process the booking without approver review after a specified time frame. Setting the option to Notify enables another party to review the booking.
UserApprovalExpired: If set to Notify, this option controls the user that will be notified if the approval time has expired. For example, you may wish to set this to the person in charge of the overall hoteling system, usually someone in the Hotel Administration security group. This person can then approve or reject the booking, and will also be aware of delays in the approval process and can take measures to improve the process.

Notification Parameter

If you'd like to send an email notification on the status of bookings to the occupiers of booked rooms, set the SendEmailToOccupiers option to Yes. This instructs the system to notify occupiers (whether visitors, other employees, or yourself) on the status of a booking. It sends an email notification to let the occupier know:

the details of bookings made for them
if bookings are canceled
bookings are approved or rejected (if an approval process is in effect)

Activating this parameter is especially useful when you have users making bookings on behalf of other employees and visitors, as it enables the occupiers to receive the details of the booking that they will be using.