Table of Contents

Approvals - Common Issues

Niamh Ferns Updated by Niamh Ferns

Troubleshooting Common Approvals Issues

There are a few common causes for approvals either not working, not correctly sending emails, or appearing incorrect with no option to approve/decline. Below are a general set of steps you can take before reaching out to the support team that should get you up and running again with approvals quickly.

"My ticket is not being created under an approval status."

The first thing to check here is whether the Service Type automation has been set correctly.

  1. Figure out which Service Type is being submitted by an end user
    Hint: you can use the DeskDirector API to query the ticket if you are otherwise unable to determine what the Sevice Type is.
  2. Open the Admin portal and navigate to the Service Type under Portal > Service Catalogue > Service Types
  3. Check under the Automation tab whether you are correctly setting the ticket to be created with your Pending status for approvals

"Approvers are not receiving my approval request."

This is usually related to a permissions or contact details issue:

  1. Verify that the approver has been assigned Approver permissions in the DeskDirector Admin portal.
  2. Check if the email address of the approver is showing correctly and is up-to-date in DeskDirector
  3. Ensure that the email notifications for Approval Workflow are not blocked by spam filters

"Approvals are not showing in my approver's DeskDirector portal."

This is one that can be caused by a variety of things so here's a checklist:

  • Check if the approver has been assigned Approver permissions
  • Check that your ticket was correctly placed under the approval pending status
  • If using ConnectWise as your PSA integration, check to make sure the names for the approval statuses on the board this ticket is on correctly match with the names for the statuses you have set in DeskDirector.
    Your status names for approval statuses need to match exactly as they are in ConnectWise. A common issue we run into is that clients have set different names for their approval statuses across different boards leading to approvals working on some boards but not on others.

    You can verify in your Admin portal under System > Feature Configuration > Tickets > Approvals whether the board is showing correctly in the boards using approvals dropdown.
  • Verify that the approver has logged in to the DeskDirector portal and is logged in with the correct contact. (Some users will have contacts under multiple companies. If a user is under company A and company B, they will not be able to see approvals for company A when using their contact under company B.)

"My approval request was declined with no reason given."

This is often an intended behaviour. Some approvers will not give a reason when declining an approval request. Check with your manager if they did intend to provide a note or not. Alternatively, we provide a configuration option in the Admin portal so require managers provide a reason when declining approvals.

"The approval email w not triggered."

This is often an email configuration issue. You can see more on setting up email notifications here. Below is a list of steps you can take to verify:

  1. Verify that you have set email notifications to trigger after the approval status is changed in the Admin portal under Email > Notification Events
  2. Check if the email notifications for Approval Workflow are not blocked by spam filters
  3. Ensure that the email addresses of all approvers are correct and up-to-date in DeskDirector

How did we do?

Tickets & Chats - Common Issues

Email & Email Delivery - Common Issues

Contact