Approval and Assignment Workflow

In many companies there is a gap between the staff responsible for completing an RFP and the subject matter experts who know the right answers for the RFP's questions.  There may be another gap between those two groups and others whose word-smithing skills are more appropriate for inclusion in the official RFP response.

Recognizing the potential for these knowledge/communication gaps, RFPMonkey.com has separated user permissions into several, individually-assignable rights.  Depending on how these rights are administered, each user will have one or more roles.  The basic roles are:  Author,  Editor,  Assignor,  Approver,  and  Reader.

Approval Workflow

The Approvals tab shows any entries whose status is Pending. These entries have been submitted for approval but they have not yet been approved. They stay in this state until a user with Approve authority reviews them and approves them by setting their status to Approved. Once approved, the approver's name and the approval date are noted on the entry as part of the audit trail.

There are 3 ways to approve an RFP entry:

Direct Approval by the Author

In most cases an author might submit an entry for approval by changing its status to PENDING and saving it. However, if an author has Approve permissions, he may set the status of a new entry to APPROVED prior to saving it. In this case, the author is also the approver. Doing this instantly approves the entry and it will not show up in the Pending Approval list.

Setting Status to APPROVED while in Edit Mode

Similar to the previous situation, if a user has both Edit permission and Approve permission, he may directly set the status of an entry to APPROVED and save it. This would be the technique to use if minor edits had to be made to the entry prior to its approval.

One-Click Approve

Users who have Approve permission will see an Approve option at the bottom of the screen while viewing the details of a pending entry. Simply clicking this link will approve the entry without having to enter edit mode. This is called a one-click approval.

Rejection Workflow

It is possible that an entry will not be approved. A user with Approve permission also has permission to reject. If an entry is rejected its status is reset to DRAFT and it will once again be viewable/editable by its original author. The author should correct or improve the entry and resubmit it for approval.

There are 2 ways to reject a pending RFP entry:

Setting Status to DRAFT while in Edit Mode

Similar to the previous situation, if a user has both Edit permission and Approve permission, he may directly set the status of an entry back to DRAFT and save it. This technique would allow the approver/rejector to add a comment to the entry for the original author subsequent to its rejection.

One-Click Reject

Users who have Approve permission will see a Reject option at the bottom of the screen while viewing the details of a pending entry. Simply clicking this link will reject the entry without having to enter edit mode. This is called a one-click rejection.

Assignment Workflow

Draft entries can be assigned to other users for completion prior to submission for approval.  The assignee can submit the entry for approval or can save it with approval if he/she has approval rights.

Controlling Approval and Assignment workflow is as easy as clicking on the appropriate action link.  Access to each of these actions is dictated by the user's permissions.  Only users with Edit rights will see the Edit link.  Only users with Approve rights will see the Approve and Reject links.  Only users with Assign rights will see the Assign link.