How do you handle it when a customer needs approval from another employee?

[Antonia]

When a customer (our customers are all internal employees) needs approval from a supervisor. For example, when a customer needs new software. Is there any way to add the supervisor to the work item?

There is a “Request Participant” field, but this participant only receives a notification that they have been added as a participant, nothing more. They also do not receive a notification when a comment has been written. Is there any way to change this so that the Request Participant also receives all notifications like the customer?

For example, if we say, “You need approval for this.” Then the customer should enter their supervisor as the request participant and say, “Hello, can you give me approval for this?” The request participant should then receive a notification. 

[Nikola Perisic · Accepted solution]

Hello @Antonia 

This can be handled by adding the approval system to your statuses of your workflows. You can check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEs0CLdsuZA

The documentation from Atlassian only exists for Data Center but not for the Cloud as well.

[Antonia]

Thank you for the video. However, it doesn't help me, as our customers don't have the option to set a status in the workflow. So, really, only the request participants need to be able to receive all notifications.
Or do we have to set the status for agents separately? But how can supervisors approve requests if they don't have access to the backend either? They only have the Help Center.

[Nikola Perisic]

Customer notifications and the option Public comment was made all customers involved will receive this notification. By default, request participants receive the same notifications as the reporter. In your case, at least supervisor needs to be an agent who will approve the statuses. Other than that, they cannot approve the requests at all. Also agents are the only ones who can change the status of the requests.

[Antonia]

I have adjusted the customer notification settings so that all customers involved now receive comments, because previously only the reporter received the comments. The request participants only received an email informing them that they were now participants... nothing more. But I think that's fine for now, thank you very much!

[Marc -Devoteam- · Accepted solution]

Hi @Antonia 

See all related documentation around approvals in JSM

Managers who are customers can approve, you can even provide the field to set a user as approver in the request.

But you will need to have an approval step in the workflow.

[Antonia]

Hi @Marc -Devoteam-

What do you mean by manager? Do you mean agents? So approvers need to have rights in our backend? Because approvers should only be and remain customers. Is that possible as just a customer? And thank you for your help!

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @Antonia 

No approvers don't need agent permissions in the backend.

If you set approvers and they are a user in the system (customer) they can be set as aprover and can approve from received email or when logging in to the portal.

On the portal on via their profile then can see awaiting approvals and can approve from their as well.

[Antonia]

Ah okay, thank you. Can customers change the status by themselves?