Using CA Service Catalog for Administrators › Request Life Cycle › Approval Processes

Approval Processes

When a user submits a request, approvers must approve or reject each service in the request. For each service, the administrator specifies one of the following approval processes on the Service Details tab:

No Approval

Requires no approval. When a request containing the service is submitted, the status is changed to Approval Done.

System Approval Process

Uses a combination of the following to determine the approver and the number of approval levels:

• The management hierarchy
• The authorization level of each user in the hierarchy
• The approval level specified for the service

When a request containing the service is submitted and the Requested For value is a user, not an account, the Catalog system does the following:

1. Finds the Requested For authorization level of the user in the user profile.
2. Compares it with the approval level of the service.

If the authorization level of the user matches or exceeds the approval level specified by the service, then no further approval is needed. The system moves the request to the next status, typically Pending Fulfillment or Completed.

Otherwise, then the system determines an approver, as follows:

• The Requested For value is a user. In this case, the system determines the manager of the user and assigns the request to that manager for approval.
• The user does not have a manager or the Requested For value is an account. In this case, the system assigns the approval task to the user-specified in the configuration option named Default User For Request Actions.

After the manager or other approver approves the service, the system uses similar logic to determine whether another level of approval is required. If yes, then the system routes the request to a request manager whose authorization level matches or exceeds the approval level of the service.

Workflow Driven Approval Process

Uses a CA Process Automation process to determine the approval process.

The process includes the business logic to determine the approver and the number of approval levels. CA Service Catalog provides sample processes and process definitions, including default ones for a single level of manager approval.

For any service, if you use this approval process with a CA Process Automation process, you can optionally use policies. In that case, the approval process proceeds the same as with Policy driven approval process, except as follows:

• The Workflow driven approval process uses the CA Process Automation workflow engine to evaluate and implement policies.
• Policy driven approval process uses the Catalog Policy Engine to evaluate and implement policies. Because this engine is internal, this option is typically more efficient for an approval process that uses policies.

Verify that the rules and actions are enabled for the option that you specify.

Policy driven approval

Uses policies to determine the approval process for requests. You specify conditions in policies, based on the attributes of service options, services, requested items, users, and so forth. If a policy is active and a submitted request meets the condition in the policy, then the following occurs: The users (assignees) named in the policy receive a request pending action to approve, reject, or fulfill a service option, service, or request.

Policy driven approval and system approval use a few common terms. For example, in both methods, the level of approval refers to the authority of an approver in numeric terms: the higher the number, the greater the authority of the approver. However, in policy driven approval, the administrator assigns each approver and authority level uniquely, with no relation to system approval.

If a policy does not apply to a request, the Catalog system uses the approval flow defined in the workflow driven approval process. For example, you are using the predefined workflow approval process and no predefined sample policy applies to a request pending action. In that case, the Catalog system assigns request pending action to the manager of the Requested For user. If the user has no manager, then the system assigns the request pending action to the Default User for Request Actions This user is specified in the Catalog Configuration.