Common Approval (Like Manager Signature) for a List / Table of details

[Kanha_PM_Office]

Hi Community,
I have an app to capture user attendance entries.
How to have the Manager to approve in one go (as a Signature) for all the employees working under him.

Thank you.

[Pratyay_Rakshit]

Kanha_PM_Office:

How to have the Manager to approve in one go (as a Signature) for all the employees working under him.

I assume that you have the relation between the managers and the employees working under him within a table.

I would myself set up an ‘approval’ form, that will log the manager’s e-mail and consequently his name. There would be a column for the employees set up as reference and base type enumlist (that lets you make multiple selections at once) and a yes/no column that records whether the record is approved or not. It would be of initial value ‘NO’.

Now I would set up an action available only to that manager ( I assume that you have rules set in the app to distinguish the managers) for the ‘approval’ table that will set the approval column to yes from no. Further you can set up a virtual column that shows ‘approved’ or ‘pending’ based on the approval column’s yes/no, or you can directly use an approval column with type ‘enum’ with values ‘pending’ and ‘approved’.

The action being available to only that manager, it kind of equates the whole thing to a signature, as no one else would have possibly approved a record, other than him/her.

Lastly in the detail view of the approval table records, you can set the ‘approval’ column as the header column, with color formatting rules that will show up big on the top of the page.

I’m more than sure this isn’t exactly your requirement, but it will provide an overview on how to start. If you be more specific then it would be easier to fine tune this whole thing.

[Kanha_PM_Office]

Hi @Pratyay_Rakshit,
Thank you for your time & effort in drafting this detailed explanation.
To give you an idea of my app,
Table Attendance Entry captures the basic associates’ details using their IDs with their individual attendance data.

Now,
1) I assume that you have the relation between the managers and the employees working under him within a table
Yes, I have.

2) I would myself set up an ‘approval’ form, that will log the manager’s e-mail and consequently his name.
Yes. Managers’ Id/ Name is sufficient.

3)There would be a column for the employees set up as reference and base type enumlist (that lets you make multiple selections at once) and a yes/no column that records whether the record is approved or not. It would be of initial value ‘NO’.

Now I would set up an action available only to that manager ( I assume that you have rules set in the app to distinguish the managers) for the ‘approval’ table that will set the approval column to yes from no. Further you can set up a virtual column that shows ‘approved’ or ‘pending’ based on the approval column’s yes/no, or you can directly use an approval column with type ‘enum’ with values ‘pending’ and ‘approved’.

The action being available to only that manager, it kind of equates the whole thing to a signature, as no one else would have possibly approved a record, other than him/her.
Pls correct / help in the following items,
a) In this scenario, if we consider having Enum List (I guess, it’s the Name of associates), I need to populate ONLY the entered data.
i - What would be the cut off date for the Manager to approve.(if we are to consider all dates, then,how it can be done?
ii - If not, we have to ask the manager to select date & approve.

Other steps seem doable & clear. Let me try this & get back to you.

Thank you.

P.S - If you wish to check the app & data personally, I shall share with you to your email.

[Pratyay_Rakshit]

Kanha_PM_Office:

I need to populate ONLY the entered data.

I’m not sure I caught that. Please explain.

As for your concern with the dates, any scenario is doable as far as date ranges are concerned, be it predefined in the editor, or input by users.

You have to elaborate your requirements too for this

[Kanha_PM_Office]

I have a sheet with all the Associates’ data.
In the Table Attendance Entry, the user selects the name & then, enters the attendance for that particular day.
Now, to answer your question, the Manager should be able to approve only what is entered in the above table & the same holds true for Names of associates (which we are going to show as Enum List).
But, how is this going to reflect in the original data? (I am just thinking loud)

[Pratyay_Rakshit]

Totally doable.

But first I need to get clear on a couple more things.

1. Are the ‘associates’ same as the ‘users’ that you are referring to? The manager ‘approves’ the ‘users’ or ‘associates’ or are they essentially the same entities?

enters the attendance for that particular day.

What’s the data type for this ‘entry’? What do they actually enter?

[Kanha_PM_Office]

1)Yes.
2)

This is how the form looks,

[Pratyay_Rakshit]

So for the ‘attendance’ data, a manager needs to know whether the associate is ‘present’ or ‘absent’ (from the [Attendance Type] column) and if he’s present then the duration of his service (start time and end time).

Based on this you need the manager to approve the ‘attendance’. Correct?

And attendances, as general rule of thumb, should be done for each day. I don’t see a date column in the form.

So when the manager approves, what does he approve actually? If I was a manager, I would approve my subordinates’ attendances for a day. If there is no Date column then it is in no way possible to filter out unique attendance entries.

[Kanha_PM_Office]

No, we have Date column also.
It’s not visible in the above image.

Manager just needs to check & Approve the attendance.
(Probably, we might need give space for date wise, associate wise approval)

Thank you.

[Pratyay_Rakshit · Accepted solution]

Approvals will apply to a whole row.

Here’s how the thing can be brought to fruition:

1. Add an approval column in the ‘attendance entry’ sheet, with type Yes/No. The initial value of it should be ‘No’.

2. Add a virtual column in the attendance table, which is the concatenation of all the pertinent columns, that a manager needs to see to uniquely ‘identify’ each entry. Let’s call this Att_Vir.

3. Make another approval sheet for the managers, with appropriate fields like ‘Attendance to approve’, ‘user’, etc. You will better know which columns to use.

4. In the ‘attendance to approve’ column, use a valid_if using ‘Select’ expression, that shows the Att_Vir columns in the drop-down (the type would be enum-list). Proper filtering criteria have to be used, to show entries that are unapproved (based on that Approval column) and under the liability of that manager (probably when the user enters his name in the attendance sheet, then the associated manager’s name will come up using dereference).

4. Actions: Here you need two actions a) one for the ‘attendance entry’ table
   and b) For the approval table.
   The attendance entry table action will mark the ‘Approved’ column to YES, and probably some other columns if you want to store some details. The approval table action will use the ‘attendance entry’ table action as a reference, with proper expressions guiding it to which rows to act on.

5. The approval table action has to be attached to the form, so that the action takes place when the form is saved, as opposed to getting to the detail view of every approval entry and pressing the action button.

Get these in place, and I will guide you on what expressions to use.

[Kanha_PM_Office]

Great @Pratyay_Rakshit!
Thank you so much for your time & interest!