Multiple Approvals for a Single Request

Multiple Approvals for a Single Request

While this may not be the only use case, the best example I have right now is new user onboarding.  Our onboarding process requires we submit multiple approval requests for things like the user's computer, a company cell phone, certain software packages, etc.  Currently we have to create separate requests for each of those approval requests in addition to the main request for the overall tracking of the user onboarding.  We would like to streamline this and be able to submit all the approvals under one request.  

I tried submitting multiple approvals on the same request and it sort of works.  For our purposes I change the subject of the email to have a different name than the request so that it was specific to the specific item I needed approval for.  The email that came through to the approver looked great and in the Conversation tab it showed the way we would want it.  The issue I found was on the Approvals tab it reflects the status of the last request and you cannot see the details of what items was approved.  For example, I submitted four items for approval and approved three of them in my test.  It showed the status as Approved even if there was still one pending approval. 



Also, when I went to approve ever items after the first one I received this message when I went to Approve/Reject that "approval", probably because it thinks it is the same approval request.



What we'd like to see is the following:
  1. Each approval request listed separately with their own status - so in the above example I would see four items listed under approval, three of which would show the status as approved and one that would show the status as Pending Approval.  Sort of like an "Add an additional approval" option.
  2. In the Approvals view it would be nice to show the subject of the Approval email 
  3. If the approver clicks on the link to view the details of the request (via My Pending Approvals) it should show the Approval request as it is added to the Conversations tab if they view the request normally and not view the Approval method


The overall goal is to do the following so I am open to alternative suggestions too:
  1. Track all of the necessary onboarding related approvals in a single onboarding request (can also be non-onboarding related but this is probably our best example use case)
  2. Have the submitter be able to submit all the necessary approvals at one time so that the approver can see them all
  3. Have the approver be able to approve/reject each one separately and have their response tracked properly in the Approvals tab or at least in the Conversations so that if any items are rejected or still pending approval, the submitter knows what they need to follow up on
  4. Have the approver be able to see the details of the approval request when they click the request link in the My Pending Approvals window
  5. Ideally also show the subject of the approval request along with the name of the request in the My Pending Approvals view so that they can differential between each request
The only other thing to add is that we noticed you all added checklists and we are going to investigate using them so if you could submit the approval per checklist item that might work, especially if you can pull the name of the checklist item to show that.

Please let me know if you have any questions/suggestions.

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