Skip redundant approvals if approver has already approved

[Huyen Huynh]

My question pertains to approval chains.  Early in our workflow, we may have different individuals approving requests as:

• Budget Approver (always the same individual)
• Tech Approver (one approver but can be different people)
• Legal Approver (always the same individual)

Later in our workflow, we require additional approvals from the heads of departments and business units:

• Department Approver
• Business Unit Approver

If John Smith already approved as the "Tech Approver" but he's also the Department Head, how do I configure approvals to skip this approval?  

I know I can search for John's approval by:

approvals = approver("jsmith") and not approvals = pendingBy("jsmith")

...however, because "Tech Approver" can be different people, I'd like to set "approver" to "Tech Approver" custom field but this is not supported:

e.g. approvals = approver("Tech Approver") 

Is there any way to pull this information using ScriptRunner?  Other suggestions/recommendations?

[Fahad Siddiqui]

@Huyen Huynh  you can go and check the "Automation" option where you can define default rules.