For access to shared mailboxes, shared DFS locations etc, there are multiple people for each user who can provide the approval.  I would like to be able to configure either multiple users in the ( $DEPT_HEAD$) or 'Reports To' field, and then have this list of users be sent the approval email so that any of them can approve the request.

Or alternatively, can we have a mechanism to auto-assign approval emails to any requester who has been designated as a "service request approver" AND is in the same department as the user, much as the ( $DEPT_HEAD$) operator works but with a list instead.

It seems tedious  and a little illogical that you can set up users to be approvers, but can't let the system assign the approval emails to the approvers in the same section as the person making the request, there has to be a manual assignment of approvers in the work flow of a request. that means you either have ALL approvers in this list, or have to create a new request template for each department/location/other parameter you wish to sort by