Approval flows

In general, the approval process includes the following user interactions, all of which are carried out with an HTML browser. Approvers receive notifications of all approval requests by e-mail.

  1. The system determines whether approval is required for the organization performing the particular action.

  2. An approver is selected from the appropriate approver member group.

  3. If approval is not required, pre and post-processing tasks are initiated.

  4. If approval is required, the pre-approve command is invoked and the approval request is stored. E-mail notifications are sent to approvers.

  5. An approver checks the list of approval requests awaiting approval and approves or rejects them. If desired, the approver can add comments.

  6. If approved, the post-approve command, if any, is invoked. If rejected, the post-reject command, if any, is invoked.

  7. The submitter can check the approval status throughout the process and view the approver's comments.

When an approvable action enters the approval process, the submitter sees it as an approval submission or submission in the user interface. The approver responsible for approving the action sees it referred to as an approval request or request in the user interface.

More specifically, when an organization signs up for a specific approver member group, users having a particular user role are implicitly placed in that group. Any user with the default role for that organization becomes an approver for the corresponding action. The five approver member groups and their associated default roles available for WebSphere Commerce are as follows:

Process subject to approval WebSphere Commerce default approval groups Default role with authority to approve

  • Contract submissions approvals

  • Disable inherited contract submissions approvals


  • Contract Submit Approvals

  • DisableInherited Contract Submit Approvals

Sales Manager

  • Order processing approvals

  • Disable inherited order processing approvals


  • Order Process Approvals

  • DisableInherited Order Process Approvals

Buyer approver

  • Reseller and buyer registration

  • Disable inherited reseller and buyer registration approvals


  • Reseller Registration Approvals

  • DisableInherited Reseller Registration Approvals

Channel Manager

  • RFQ response approvals

  • Disable inherited RFQ response approvals


  • RFQ Response Approvals

  • DisableInherited RFQ Response Approvals

Sales Manager

  • User registration

  • Disable inherited user registration approvals


  • User Registration Approvals

  • DisableInherited User Registration Approvals

Seller Administrator or Buyer Administrator for new approval groups.

When the bootstrap data is loaded a user registration approval group is created for the root organization. That group contains one user -1000 (wcsadmin).

Users with the Site Administrator role can approve all approval processes.

The table also lists the flows for disabling the inherited approval authority for each of the following approval processes:

Disable the inherited approval authority that a child organization has inherited from its parent organization means that the child organization no longer has the same approval access as its parent. In order for an organization to override the parent organization's approval requirement, the disable member groups are included in the list of approval levels for an organization. The Site Administrator can open the Organization Administration Console, select Access Management > Find Organizations to find organizations to work with. From this list, the Site Administrator can select an organization and click Approval to view a list of approval groups for the organization and select approval groups from this list and move them to the Selected approvals list.

By default, the root organization has the User Registration Approvals group added to the Selected roles list and the default organization has the DisableInherited User Registration Approvals group added to the Selected approvers list. The implication of this default setting is as follows:

If an organization administrator does not sign up for an approver member group, approval will not be enabled for the associated business process. This means that all instances of that particular process are automatically approved.

Related concepts

Contract approval flow

Order approval flow

Reseller and buyer registration approval flow

RFQ response flow

User registration approval flow

Related tasks

Enabling contract approvals

Approving or rejecting approval requests

Checking the status of approval requests - - -