Manage approvals

F2 Touch - Executive is designed for managing approvals. Upon opening the app, you will see a list of approvals awaiting your response. Urgent approvals are placed at the top.

Figure 1. The "Approvals" list

The list includes all approvals that your secretariat has sent to F2 Touch - Executive. Therefore, there may be approvals on which you are listed as the next approver that are not yet displayed in the app.

Approvals are sent to the app in the same manner as sending approvals to F2 Manager. Read more in F2 Gateway Approvals.

To process an approval, open the received material in the app to familiarise yourself with it. If necessary, use an external app to edit any attached documents. Then you must decide whether you can approve the received material. The following sections describe how to gain an overview of the approval and how to approve or return the material.

After an approval is processed in F2 Touch – Executive, it is automatically sent back to your secretariat. This means that it automatically becomes available to the secretariat on F2 Desktop.

The approval’s attached documents

Tap an approval record in the list to open it. You can navigate between the record and approval documents by tapping their corresponding icons at the top of the screen as shown below. The open record or approval document is displayed below the grey ribbon.

Figure 2. An open approval

Under the record or approval document, any attached documents are displayed. These can be downloaded in their original format or PDF. Tap one of the arrows next to the document title to download the document.

Once downloaded, a document can be opened in an external app and, depending on its file type, edited.

Process the approval

An approval is processed by either approving or returning it. You approve if the content is ready to be forwarded to the next approval step. You return the approval if the content needs correcting or reviewing by either the responsible user or an approver at an earlier step.

When choosing to approve or return, it is also possible to add a comment to your action in the "Insert approver comment" field. The comment is meant to elaborate on your choice of approving or returning for others in the approval process to see.

Figure 3. Tap the comment field to open the keyboard

A number of configurations affect the content and processing of the approver comment when received by a secretariat in F2 Desktop. These configurations are described in F2 Gateway Approvals. Configurations are performed in cooperation with cBrain.

Approve the material

Choose Approve above the comment field if the submitted material can be approved. Optionally, write a comment and tap Final approval below the comment field to save your choice and comment.

Figure 4. Final approval

If there are additional steps after you in the approval process, the Final approval button is replaced by the Approve button.

The approval is then forwarded to your secretariat, which will forward it to the next approver, if any. Otherwise it is forwarded to the user responsible for the record with a message that the material has been finally approved.

Return the material

Choose Return above the comment field if the submitted material is to be returned. The material can then be adjusted before it is sent on in the approval process or finally approved.

Figure 5. Return material to the responsible user

When you want to return an approval, you may have several options depending on the configuration of F2.

First, choose which step you want to return the approval to. All previous steps can be selected.

Figure 6. Choose your recommendation for the next step

Next, choose your recommendation of where to resume the approval. Click the drop-down menu under "Recommendation on next steps". The following recommendations are available:

"Return and resume after [responsible user]" means that the approval process effectually starts over and goes through all approval steps again.
"Return and resume with me" means the approval process resumes at your step. This choice is relevant if you want to see the corrections made to the material based on your feedback.
"Return and resume after me" means the approval process resumes at the step following yours, if one exists. This is equivalent to a conditional approval.

The choices above only constitute a recommendation. The user to which the approval is returned has the final choice of where to resume the approval process.

It is possible to restrict the return options to only Return and Conditionally approve through a configuration. The configuration is further described in F2 Manager. Configurations are performed in collaboration with cBrain.