Building requisition approval workflows

Enabling requisition approvals

All approval workflows are managing from your Settings. If you would like to enable requisition approvals:

• Navigate to Settings > Approvals > Approval Settings.
• Make sure the 'Require approval to create new requisitions within Lever' toggle is turned on.

• Additionally, when Lever users are asked to provide approval they will also receive an automated email from Lever. 
  • If you want to require users to authenticate their identity and log into Lever before approving a request, then make sure the 'Require user authentication for making decisions on approval requests' toggle is turned on. 
  • If you also want to hide the details of the request from the email body, then make sure the 'Hide approval details from approval emails' checkbox is selected. 

Building the default requisition approval workflow

The default requisition approval workflow is applied to all requisitions that are not subject to a custom requisition approval. There can only be one default requisition approval workflow in a Lever environment. To build the default requisition approval workflow:

• Navigate to Settings > Approvals > Requisitions.
• Click the Create Approval button and select Default from the menu that appears.

• In Step 1 of the approval editor, start by adding approvers. If you are adding more than one approver, you must also define the minimum number of approvers required to approve the requisition. There are three types of requisition approvers you can add:
  • Dynamic approvers - users with a specific relationship to the requisition, defined as follows:
    
    • Requisition hiring manager — the Hiring manager of the requisition, defined during requisition creation.
    • Requisition owner — the Owner of the requisition, defined during requisition creation.
  • Static approvers - specific users in your Lever environment.
  • Custom approvers - an approver 'token' with a custom title; during requisition creation, the user drafting the requisition will select an approver from among the users in your Lever environment to fill the spot of the token. If an approval chain contains multiple custom tokens, an approver must be chosen for each token before approval can be requested. To learn how custom approver tokens appear in the requisition creation process, refer to our help article on requesting approval for requisitions.

Dynamic approvers appear in blue, status approvers appear in grey, and custom approvers appear in pink.

• If you wish to make a multi-step approval chain, click on the Add Step button and repeat as necessary for each additional step you wish to add. In a multi-step approval, the requisition passes to the next individual or group of approvers in the sequence once approved by the minimum required number of preceding approvers.

• When you have added all required approvers to the chain, click Create.

The default requisition approval workflow will activate upon creation. All requisitions created will be subject to the approval workflow unless superseded by a custom requisition approval workflow or the requisition is excluded based on the conditions built into the default approval logic. To learn more about how conditions can be be used to make exceptions to requisitions approvals, jump to the section of this article on adding conditions.

Building custom requisition approval workflows

Custom requisition approval workflows can be used to supersede the default requisition approval workflow for requisitions that meet a specific set of criteria based on department/team, work type, locations, and/or custom fields on your requisition form. To build a custom requisition approval workflow:

• Click the Create Approval button and select Custom.

• Select criteria using the menus in the 'Details' block to define which requisitions to which you want the custom approval workflow to apply.

• Incorporating custom fields into your custom approval chain allows you to apply the chain to requisitions based on values in custom 'dropdown' fields on your requisition form (other field types such as 'text input' or 'currency' cannot be used). Refer to our help article on configuring requisition settings to learn more.
  • When selecting a value for a custom field, click the Edit requisition fields button to be brought to your custom requisition field list where you can add and remove fields as needed.

• Here is an example of a custom requisition approval that applies to multiple departments, locations, work types, and a custom requisition field.

• Proceed to add approvers, steps, and defining minimum approver requirements as you would to build the default requisition approval workflow (outlined above).
• When you have added all required approvers to the workflow, click the Create button at the top of the editor.

Adding conditions to offer approval workflows

When building a requisition approval, you can define criteria for inclusion/exclusion of the requisition from specific steps in the approval chain. To add a condition to a requisition approval:

• In the approval editor, click + Add condition beneath the approver fields.
• In the 'Require step if:' field, select from the following options:
  • Headcount - if the headcount on the requisition meets the configured condition, the approval step will be required.
  • Compensation Band - Minimum - if the minimum value in the compensation band on the requisition meets the configured condition, the approval step will be required.
  • Compensation Band - Maximum - if the maximum value in the compensation band on the requisition meets the configured condition, the approval step will be required.
  • Compensation Band - Currency - if the compensation currency on the requisition matches the configured condition, the approval step will be required.
  • Compensation Band - Interval - if the compensation interval on the requisition matches the configured condition, the approval step will be required.
  • Requisition fields - select from custom fields on your requisition forms that have a field type of 'currency,' 'dropdown' or 'number.'
    • If the selected requisition field is a 'number' or 'currency' field type, choose from the following conditions: is, is between, is empty, is greater or equal to, is greater than, is less or equal to, is less than, is not, is not between, is not empty
    • If the selected requisition field is a 'dropdown' field type, choose from the following conditions: is, is empty, is not some, is some

Example of a requisition field conditional.

• If you are adding more than one condition to a step in a requisition approval, you must select a logical operator (AND or OR) that combines the conditions. You can include a maximum of five conditions on a single requisition approval step.
  • Choose AND if the approval step is triggered when all conditions are true.
  • Choose OR if the approval step is triggered when one of the conditions are true.

Example of an operator being selected to combine multiple conditions.

If a requisition meets the criteria of conditions in more than one custom approval workflow, the workflow with the largest number of matching criteria will take priority. In cases where the same number of criteria match, the matching criteria will be weighted in terms of importance as follows: (1) Team, (2) Department, (3) Location, (4) Work type, (5) Custom fields

Example
A requisition for 'Client Experience Representatives' is submitted for approval. The requisition is associated with the 'Client Experience' department and has a work type of 'Part-time'. There are two active custom requisition approval workflows, with the following criteria:

• • • Workflow A:  Departments/teams - all; Locations - all; Work types - Part-time
    • Workflow B: Departments/teams - Client Experience, all teams; Locations - all; Work types - all

Although the 'Client Experience Representatives' requisition meets the same number of criteria in both approval workflows, Workflow B will take precedence because the department criteria has a higher importance than the work type criteria.

Custom approvals can be reordered by hovering your cursor to the left of the custom approval title and then clicking to drag the approval to a new location in the list.

Editing and deleting requisition approval workflows

To make changes to a requisition approval workflow:

• Navigate to Settings > Approvals.
• Make sure the 'Requisition' tab is selected.
• Select the requisition approval workflow that you wish to edit.
• Click the Edit button in the approval editor.

• When you have made the necessary changes, click the Save Changes button.

To delete a requisition approval workflow:

• Navigate to Settings > Approvals.
• Make sure the 'Requisition' tab is selected.
• Select the requisition approval workflow that you wish to delete.
• Click the ellipses (⋯) button in the approval editor.
• Select Delete Approval Workflow.

Approval workflows can also be edited and deleted by clicking the ellipses (⋯) aligned with each entry and in 'Approvals' list and selecting the corresponding option.