Approvals in DeskDirector (Legacy Admin Console)

Jason He Updated by Jason He

Approvals allow your clients to have some control on what tickets make their way to you. Approval tickets are easy to set up within DeskDirector, just follow the instructions on this page to see how to set it up. 

Approval Workflow

  • The client chooses an approval request type in DeskDirector, these request types are fed from and configured in the DeskDirector Admin Console
  • When the ticket is submitted, it is created in your PSA with the status that you have set for the request type. If this is an approval request type, then it will be your approval required status. 
  • Approvers who you have selected for that client (by giving them Approver permissions in the admin console) then automatically receive an email informing them a ticket has been submitted that needs their approval. These same people will also see the Approval Section in their DeskDirector Portal showing any tickets that need approval. 
  • From here they can open the ticket and approve or decline it. 
  • If the ticket is declined, the reason for this decision is added to the ticket as a ticket note. Whichever the decision was, the ticket will change to the according status (Approval Granted/Declined) based on what you set in the Admin Console. 
  • An email is then triggered to all approvers letting them know that the ticket has been approved or declined.

Setting up your Approval Statuses

In order to get Approvals working, you need to set up your Approval Statuses. You can set these up under your Admin Console > General Configurations. All you need to do is tell DeskDirector which statuses to use as the approval statuses.

Please note that these statuses need to exist inside your PSA.

In ConnectWise, you can create statuses under System > SetUp Tables > Service Board > {board(s) you want to be able to have approvals} > Statuses

In Autotask, this is done under Admin> Features & Settings > Service Desk > Task & Ticket Statuses

We recommend using the default status names, Approval Required, Approval Granted, and Approval Declined.

Giving a user Approval Permissions

The next step is to select an approver for the company you want to enable approvals for. You can do this by selecting the user under the Maintain Contacts tab, and giving them the "Approvals" permission.

Setting up an Approval Request Type

In order to create a request type that needs approval, you just need to make a request type as usual in your Admin Console. The only difference between an approval ticket and a normal request type is that the approval ticket will have the status the ticket should come in under as "Approval Required" or whichever status you have set to be equivalent to this. 

Approval Emails

When an approval email is sent from DeskDirector, we use the SMTP settings set up in the SMTP settings tab of the Admin Console. You can also set up here the details of how the approval email will come in.

If there are no SMTP settings, we will use the default SMTP settings from our server, in which case we recommend you add our IP (you can get it from pinging your instance) to your SPF records. 

Please note that approval emails will be sent when the ticket is created with the approval required status. If you activate the approval process after ticket creation, no email will be sent out. 

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