Creating a New Approval Template

When users submit artwork for approval, they have the option to use approval templates as opposed to typing out approvers each time. Using approval templates ensures consistency across your company’s approval process.  

A user with admin permissions can create approval templates in admation. The easiest way to see if you have admin permissions is to check that you have an Admin button in your main menu.  

To create a new approval template, click Admin. Then select Approval Templates.

Click New Approval Path. 

Then give your template a name and specify if you want your related organisations (clients or agencies) to use this approval path. By default, your answer should be No.

Then you'll need to add users to your Approval Path. This is the list of people your approval will be going to when a user selects this specific template. Click the Pen icon to add users to your new template.

 

Adding Users to Your New Template

You can add either individual users or groups to your template. Click on Users to select individual admation users. You can also click System Groups to send approval requests to an entire team or internal department that you've already set up in the system. Or visit this help guide for information on creating user groups.

Quick Glossary on Approvals

Before you get started, we should make sure that you're familiar with a few glossary terms on our approvals process:

• Level – a level refers to a group of people who receive a piece of artwork to review at the same time. After Level 1 reviews and approves an item, it will move to Level 2, and so on.
• Continuous – if a level has the Continuous box ticked, Level 1 may review an item. Regardless of whether that item is approved or has changed requested, it will move to Level 2. This is commonly used with legal teams.
• All – if either a level or group has ALL selected, everyone in the level (or group) needs to approve the item.
• Any – if either a level or group has ANY selected, anyone in the level (or group) can approve the item on behalf of everyone else. Once one person approves the item, no one else will be able to add feedback. This is handy if you want to speed up the reviews process, but not if you want everyone's feedback on an item.

Creating Your Approval Template

Once you click the Pen icon, you'll be able to select the approvers you'd like to add into your approval template. You'll see a number of tabs across the screen:

• Users: Individual users with admation accounts
• System Groups: Pre-set groups of users with admation accounts
• External Users: Individuals without admation accounts

Choose the appropriate tab, then locate your individual (or group) from the list. Click the Green Arrow to add a user to your Approval Template. The button will turn grey once the user has been added. Add as many users as you would like to your first level.

A preview of your approval template will show on the right hand side of the screen. 

To select another approval level, click Add Approval Level. Continue adding your individuals or groups as needed.

If you'd like to add an individual without an admation account, click the External Users tab. Start by typing in their first name, last name and email address. Then add their details as needed. 

After you've added each of your users, you may like to determine whether your template will use ALL or ANY approvals. Illustrate this by selecting the appropriate option on the right side of your screen for each level or group.

When you’re finished creating your approval template, click Done.  You'll then have the option to set a default turn around time for each approval level. Admation will factor this in when setting deadlines for work that's submitted for approval using this template.

Then click Save. Your users will be able to select this saved template to use in practice.

Note that as of admation 3.98, we've upped the smarts on your approval templates. If your submitters are limited to using approval templates only, and if you have a default turn around time listed above, your submitters won't be able to update deadlines.