Approving Playbook Tasks

Once the assignee has marked a playbook task status as Done, the selected approvers get a notification to approve the task. In the approval process, the approver or approvers review the assigned tasks and click Approve. A task or a task template can have multiple approvers.

Note:

Ensure that the Accounting - Playbook Task Approver permission set is assigned to the user profiles that you select as approvers. For more information, contact your administrator.

Only the playbook owner can select approvers and manage the approvers list for a task or a task template of that playbook. To do so:

  1. In an accounting playbook task record, click the Approvers tab.
  2. Click Select. The Select Approvers window displays.
  3. The list of all the available users is displayed. Select the approvers for the task and click Save. The list of the selected users is displayed in the Approvers tab.
  4. Click Save. If you select the task assignee as an approver also, you will get a warning.
  5. [Optional] To make any changes to the selected users, click Manage.

To select approvers for a playbook task template record, navigate to the Accounting Playbook Task Templates tab and follow the steps above.

When a playbook is generated from a playbook template, the task generated from the related playbook task template has the same approvers as selected in the playbook task template. Only the playbook owner can edit the selected approvers list.

Once the approvers are selected for the task:

  1. When the assignee selects Done in the Status field and clicks Save, a notification is sent to the approvers.
  2. The selected approvers review the task and if there are no issues or errors they click Approve. If there are any errors in the task, they inform the assignee.
  3. When the task is approved, the status of the task in the Details tab is automatically changed from Done to Approved. The assignee of the task is notified and if there are other approvers of the same task they also receive a notification that the task is approved.
The Status field does not display the Approved option in the picklist by default. Once the approver approves the task, the Approved option is visible in the picklist of that particular task, but it remains inactive in the Object Manager. To activate this picklist value so that it appears in the Status picklist of all the tasks:
  1. Navigate to Setup | Object Manager.
  2. Search for and click Accounting Playbook Task. Click Fields & Relationships.
  3. Click the Status field and scroll down to the Inactive Values section. Click Activate against the Approved value.

Approvers can view the assigned tasks list from the Accounting Playbook Task Approvers list view or by clicking Accounting Playbook Task Approvers in the Navigation tab of the Period End Playbook page.

Notes:
  • Approval can only be granted to tasks that have a status of Done.
  • You cannot manually select the Approved status. Only assigned approvers can approve the task. Once the task is approved, the Approve button is no longer visible.
  • If a task is approved, it's status is set to Approved and the Approve button is no longer visible. The task assignee can change the task's status back to In Progress, or Done, or Blocked, or Not Started manually and the Approve button is visible to the approvers again.
  • In Playbook Settings, approvers and assignees must select the relevant settings to receive notifications, and to set the channel through which they want to receive notifications.
  • If you select Chatter Notifications, Bell Notifications, and Email Notifications in Playbook Settings, and the Chatter is set up to send bell and email notifications, you will receive bell and email notifications twice. To avoid duplicate notifications, select Chatter Notifications only or change the Chatter settings.

If you do not want to use the approval process, you can disable the Enable Task Approval Feature in Playbook Settings. This hides the Approvers component and the Approvers tab.

If you have approved the tasks previously, and now you do not want to use the approval process, follow the same step as above and also remove the Approved option from the task's Status field drop-down list manually.

To hide the Approve button, remove the Accounting - Playbook Task Approver permission set from the user profiles. The Approve button will no longer be visible to the approver.