Decisions are available to MIS users on a Comms and Perform Tier at School-Level.
What is a Decision?
A decision can be used as a step in a workflow to ask for approval for something or confirmation that something has been done. The recipient will be provided with the option to either approve or reject the request.
It is important to understand the outcomes of these decisions. Rejecting a decision will halt the workflow, with no further steps triggered. Any updates that are triggered when a decision is rejected will still run.
One example would be that a leave request may be sent to a line manager or business manager to ask for approval for a period of leave. The recipient will be provided with the relevant information and will be given the option to approve or reject the request.
Remember
Approving the request will result in the next step being triggered.
Rejecting this decision will halt the workflow.
How do we add a decision to a workflow?
Adding a decision to your workflow is super simple. Upon clicking on the green + symbol, you are able to select from a range of options, as pictured below. To add a decision step, you are going to select Decision from the options provided.
Upon selecting Decision you will complete the required information:
- The subject of the decision (it is best to keep this brief), e.g., Leave Request
- Who is the individual making the decision
In the example below, you can see that we are asking the School Business Manager to authorise a leave request. Instead of typing the names of the decision makers, we are tagging these individuals from the roles. This is really important as it ensures that all of the steps integrate with one another properly.
If you’d like to learn more about what a tag is and find out how to add tags, check out our handy knowledge bank article Adding a Tag
Once you have added a title and a decision maker, you can then use the Instructions button to add some additional context to your request. This information will be visible to the user when they open the decision.
Constructing your decision
Once you have added a title and decision maker, you will be able to begin constructing your decision.
Within the instructions box, you can craft instructions that will be presented to the decision maker when they make their decision. It is integral, therefore, that the approver has all of the required information in order to make their decision.
You can also add instructions to the decision 'task itself. In our example, you can see that we are providing the Business Manager with some additional context as to who is requesting annual leave, along with the period of time that they require.
All of these pieces of information have been gathered elsewhere in the workflow, so we are referring back to them using tags. Adding a Tag
Additional settings and features
Once you have added your instructions, there are some other useful features you may want to include:
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Add a due date to the request. Simply click on the button next to the heading Due and set an amount of time that you would like for this request to be completed.
- Add any relevant documents. You can do this by clicking on the Attachment button and tagging or uploading a PDF document, which may be referred to as part of the decision.
Once you are happy with your decision form, this step is completed and is ready to go.
What about updates?
Should you choose to, you also have the option to use the more... tab to add updates to this step.
These are additional steps which will be triggered, depending on which decision is made by the approver.
If you’d like to add updates to your decision, you can use our helpful article What is an Update? to find out more about this.
