I. Intro

Who can perform these steps: Primary administrators or administrators with Approval management permissions.  

Feishu Approval allows you to design flexible approval processes. As an administrator, you can create rules for each approval step, including approvers required, approval methods, and approval permissions. You can also create different approval processes for different situations. For example, you can create a rule where leave requests for less than two days only require approval from a member's manager, while leave requests for two or more days require the approval of a manager and a member of the HR department.

II. Steps

Open the Approval admin console and do either of the following:

Click Create Approval to create a new approval.

Click the Edit icon on the right of an existing approval to open its details page.

Click Process Design.

By default, there's a single approver in the process. You can add more approvers as needed.

Add an approver step

Click the ⊕ New icon between steps and select Approver to add an approver to the current position.

Configure an approver step

Click an approval step to view its settings on the right, where you can configure type, approver, and permissions.

Select an Approval type. By default it's Manual approval, but you can also set the type to Auto-approve or Auto-reject, so the approval will not require manual approval of the current approver.

Decide who will be the Approver. Choose from the following:

Manager: Specify which level of manager of the requester, such as the direct manager or one level above that manager.

Department supervisor: Specify which level of department supervisor of the requester, such as the direct department supervisor or one level above that supervisor.

Role: Set a role as the approver. For more information about designating a role as an approver, see Admin | Set roles as approvers.

User Group: Make members of a specified user group as the approver.

Specify approver: Assign a specified member as the approver.

Requester self-selection: The requester selects the approver. You can limit the selection method and selection range.

Requester: The requester can also be an approver of their own request, which is often applied when it requires the requester to confirm information.

Step Approver: The approver at a previous step of the process can be selected to approve the request again at a later step. This option is not available in the first approval step.

Multiple supervisors: The process will need approval from supervisors at different levels, starting from the requester's direct manager and ending with a set approval endpoint.

Multiple department supervisors: The process will need approval from department supervisors at different levels, starting from the requester's direct department supervisor and ending with a set approval endpoint.

Contacts in the form: The Contacts widget added in Form Design can be linked as the options. You can choose either the contact, the contact's supervisor, or the contact's department leader.

Departments in the form: The Department widget added in Form Design can be linked as the options. You can specify which level of department supervisors will be the approver.

Note: Manager, Department supervisor, Role, and User group options correspond to the settings in the Feishu Admin Console > Organization.

Click Approver settings to add multiple approvers for the current step. If you add more than one approver for a step, you must further select the following approval methods:

When there are multiple approvers: Select whether to request all approvers or any approver must approve the request, or the approval must be in order.

When the approver is empty: When the system can't identify who the approver is, you can set it to approve the request automatically, send it to a specified person for approval, or transfer it to the approval administrator.

When the approver and requester are the same person: When the approver and requester are the same, you can have the requester perform the approval, have the system skip the approval step, transfer the request to the requester's direct manager, or transfer it to the department supervisor. For more information, see Admin | Approval request transfers in response to special circumstances.

Optionally, click Add under Cc recipients settings to add the people that you want to also notify about the approval updates. You can also limit the notification to Only CC when approver agrees. For more information, see Admin | Set up approval CC.

Click the Form Permissions tab to limit the form content that approvers can view or edit at this step of the approval process. This helps protect privacy or sensitive information, and makes it possible to let approvers correct or add information to the request.

Read: Specifies the form content that approvers can view at this step.

Edit: Specifies the form content that approvers can edit at this step.

Click the Operation Permissions tab to set the actions that approvers can perform at this step.

Allow transferring requests: The approver can transfer the request to another member for approval.

Allow adding/removing approvers: The approver can add another member as an approver or delete an added approver.

Allow returning requests: The approver can send the request back to a previous approval step.

Handwritten Signature: The approver needs to sign by hand when approving.

Approver's comments: The approver needs to fill in comments when approving.

For more information, see Admin | Allow approvers to transfer or return approval steps and add or remove approvers.

Click Save in the lower-right corner.

Optionally, repeat the above steps to add more approver steps.

Set conditional branches

You can use condition branches to implement different approval processes in different situations.

Click the ⊕ New icon between steps and select Conditional branch to create two branches. You can click Add Conditional Branch to create more branches.

Click Set conditions on either of the branches to set its conditions. For example, you can set up conditions so that all reimbursements for travel expenses are directed to one approval process while all other requests are directed to another approval process.

For more information, see Admin | Set conditional branches.

III. FAQs