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TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction    
• Travel Approval Settings
• Approval Management
• Approval Flow With Rules
• Setup

Introduction    

Travel Approval Settings consist of options to set rules for managing travel approval. 

The options that can be found in this tab range from setting time limits before departure to the number of hours that approval notifications will be set and the ticketing time limit management. 

Travel Approval Settings

To access the Travel Approval Settings, we will need to go to the Manage Travel Group and select the Travel Approval Settings tab.

Image 1 - Travel Approval Settings Tab Location

As soon as we access the Travel Approval Settings tab, we will be met with the following options:

Image 2 - Travel Approval Settings Tab

In the table below, all settings will be enlisted and descriptions will be provided:

Table 1 - Travel Approval Settings Descriptions

Important Note - Once all four parameters are met with the criteria - the system will choose the earliest time among this four and send a reminder e-mail when ticketing needs to be done, both Approval Manager and Alternative Approval Manager.

If all these defined times have passed booking will be canceled automatically and both the Approval Manager and Alternative Approval Manager will be able to see on their login pages that the booking is canceled and they won't have the ability to change the status anymore.

Both Approval Manager and Alternative Approval Manager will receive an email that the booking is canceled since no one reacted and traveler will also be informed via email. 

Table 1.5 - Travel Approval Settings Descriptions

The value of the field "Send pending booking to Alternate approver after" can be empty or zero.

In that case, Alternative Approval Manager will get the e-mail and booking will be visible at "manage pending approval" page at the same time when the main approver receives his last reminder e-mail. 

If the "System sends a reminder to approver" and "Send pending booking to Alternate approver" are set to be empty or zero, both Main Approver and Alternative Approver will receive the e-mail at the same time when the booking is created by traveler.

If Main Approval Manager makes an action (approves, rejects or cancel) booking, before defined time passes, no reminder e-mail will be sent. 

Table 2 - Reservation Servicing Approval Configuration

Approval Management

The approver must be assigned to the employee, not vice versa. 

When the approver logs in he can see all bookings from the employees for which he is assigned to be an approver. 

One approver can be an approver in multiple travel groups to multiple employees. 

First, an administrator must enable "Approval Policy active", then approval policies become active. 

"Approval manager" is a multi-select list, so the employee can have multiple approvers. The multi-select list contains all approvers that exist in the travel group if there are no employees with the role "Approver" the list will be empty. 

The employee can have a Standard or Cost center approval flow. Thomalex system has four levels of approval flow. If the approval flow is enabled at least one approver on the first level must be set. An employee can have multiple approvers on each level. If the employee has multiple approvers he picks one of the first levels on the shopping cart, before the booking is done. 

The Approver of the first level will see when he logs in the booking of all employees for which he is the approver. When he approves the booking, he picks the approver of the second level, if there is more than one, and so on. 

The Approver of the second level will see the booking when the approver of the first level approves it. 

If the approver of the first level declines the booking approver of the second level won't have the booking in his list of bookings. 

Booking will be in pending status until the approver of the last level (by settings) approves it. Then booking changes the status to approved. This is an example of the first and second levels. The same logic will be applied if all four levels are set. Every approver manager can have one alternative approval manager. 

The cost center approval flow works the same way, just it is related to cost centers created in the "Create cost center" wizard. The administrator can add as many cost centers as he wants and the employee will pick one on the shopping cart.

Approval Flow With Rules

An option that first needs to be enabled from the Website Settings, contact Thomalex Agents for assistance. 

Once the option is found in the website settings, the option to sync the already established approval flow can be found:

Image 3 - Sync Existing Approvals

Once the option is enabled and saved, use the following path to access the approval rules panel:

Corporate Site → Edit Travel Group → List Employees → Manage Approval

After the "Manage Approval" tab is selected the panel for creating Approval Rules will be presented. Start by clicking on "Add Rule" as seen below:

Image 4 - Add Rule Option 

Once selected, the panel to add rules will be presented:

Image 5 - Create Approval Rule

First, start by specifying the "Rule name", optionally you are allowed to enable "Rule without condition" which will, in turn, remove the need to specify any condition for an approval rule. 

Then if the condition or multiple conditions are needed, click on the "Select Type" drop-down menu and choose between five different options that are allowed to be set as a type of condition; Flight, Cost Center, Air Price, Hotel, or Total Price.

Each type will have an appropriate condition that can be set, as an example of Air price you can specify eighter "Greater than" or "Lower than":

Image 6 - Approval Rule Conditions

Finish setting the approval rule by entering the price or the appropriate value at the "Enter price..." field and click on the "Save" button to add the rule. If an additional condition is needed for a rule, you are able to click on the "+" sign on the right side for the additional condition to be added:

Image 7 - Additional Condition Added

Finaly, end setting the approval rule condition for an employee by specifying the Approval managers in the "choose approvers section and alternative approvers if needed. Optionally, click on the "+" sign on the right side to add another level of approvers. 

Setup

The "Allow employees to choose their approval managers on all levels", as previously explained will allow the Employee to select Approvers among all the levels of approval.

Image 8 - Multiple Levels of Approval Setup

Once the Employee reaches the Shopping Cart, they will see new fields which will have a drop-down list of all of their Approvers.

Image 9 - Choosing Approval Managers on all Levels of Approval

Here, the Employee will be able to choose a specific Approver for each level and finish the Booking itself.

After the Booking has been created, the Approval process will go as per usual. The Approval Request will be sent to the 1st level approver, and they will be able to choose the next-in-line Approver regardless of what was selected by the Employee. The Employee's selection will only be pre-selected for the Approvers, but can be manually changed by the Approvers.

Image 10 - Choosing the Next Approval Managers 

The Booking will only be approved after all of the selected Approvers (for all levels) have Approved it. 

As for the "Allow employees to send booking notification to all first level approval managers", this option will allow the Employee to select all of the Approvers that were added to their First Level of approval and notify them regarding the Booking's Approval at the same time.

Image 11 - Notify all First Level Approval Managers Option

Right after the Booking has been created, we will be able to see to who it was sent as well as the PNR:

Image 12 - Approval Notification Information

The Emails will be sent to all of the Approvers in the first level of approval. After this, one of them can Approve the Booking, and select the Approver from the second level of approval to forward it to and onwards.

Image 13 - Choosing the Next Approval Managers