About Approvals

Several types of items have an Approvals category in their Categories menu, including deliverables, projects, project concepts, WBS tasks, and documents.

Your system may be set up so the Approvals category is not in the category for some of the types listed above.

The Approvals page lists all the signature requirements that must be fulfilled before the item can be promoted through its lifecycle. The page lists two kinds of signature requirements:


  • those dictated by the policy that governs the item. When a policy has a signature requirement for a particular state, the signature must be applied before the item can be promoted from that state.
  • By default, Program Central does not include signature requirements in the policies that govern the types of items that have Approvals categories. However, your system might be configured to have signature requirements in these policies. For instructions on implementing such a configuration, see the Program Central Administrator's Guide.
  • those in place because a blocking route has been created for the item. A blocking route is one that includes the item in the route's content. The route creator has specified a specific state in the item's lifecycle as the blocking state. This means the item cannot be promoted from that state until the route is complete. Because the route cannot be completed until all tasks are completed, the route task assignees basically become approvers for the item. If the route task assignees don't complete their tasks, the item cannot be promoted.

Policy signature requirements and blocking routes are also shown on the Lifecycle page for an item. See the Application Exchange Framework User's Guide for a description of object lifecycles.