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To make an approval process more flexible, you can separate the approvers set making their decisions mandatory and non-mandatory.

A mandatory approver can either Approve or Reject the approval task; the non-mandatory approver can either ignore or (optional) Reject a task.

Flexible approvals are configured via User-approval activity workflow activity.

Configuring participants

In general, to configure participants, please specify the approval conditions in the Approval block in your workflow.

For mandatory participants, please fill in the fields below on the Mandatory Participants tab of the Approval block properties:

1. Employees / Groups / Roles (you can fill in one of these fields).
2. Approved When approved - define – define the approval logic
   1. Approval Conditions - specify the approval conditions
   2. Rejection Conditions - specify the rejection conditions.
   :
   1. Anyone to approve – any user can approve; the first received approval causes the activity to complete with the result of Approved.
   2. Everyone to approve – all the users must approve; otherwise, the activity will not proceed further.
   3. First response from anyone – when selected this option, the first response from any user will complete the activity.
   4. Most answers – when selected this option, the activity will be completed with the Approved result if there were received more approvals than rejects.
   5. Conditions based on script – each time a user approves or rejects, the Script is called to determine if the activity should complete.

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If your process requires non-mandatory participants involvement, then, please complete the steps below:

1. Select the Non-Mandatory Participants checkbox when configuring your Approval block properties. The Non-mandatory participants tab appears.
2. Fill in the fields below:
   1. Employees / Groups / Roles (you can fill in one of these fields).
3. To make them able to reject approvals, select the Consider non-mandatory participants checkbox.

Participant properties

To make an approver mandatory in a particular process or task (for example, Change Request authorization).

Mandatory participant properties

Their reaction is mandatory to authorize a request. When a mandatory approver receives an approval request, he they can:

1. Approve it.
2. Reject it (providing the rejection reason). 

Non-mandatory participant properties

Their reaction is not mandatory for authorization. When a non-mandatory approver receives an approval request (if he was they were involved in the process), he they can:

1. Ignore itApprove.
2. Reject it (if this ability has been provided).

Example of business usage

Approvals flexibility serves well ad hoc, for example, in a business-cases requiring a case-by-case approach, such as Change Enablement Practice.

When authorizing a change request, mandatory and non-mandatory approvers may take part in the approval process.

Both of these types can be classified according to the RACI matrix.

RACI Matrix