MAN-11 Approval Rules

Manual for approval rules in Ketryx

1. Introduction

1.1. Purpose

The purpose of this manual is to instruct users on the different configuration options available for approval rules in Ketryx.

1.2. Scope

The scope of this manual is the configuration of approval rules within Ketryx.

2. Project-level approval rules

The most common way of configuring approval rules for a project and its configuration items is to use the project-level approval rules. These rules are applied to all items in the project and are configured in Project Settings > Approval Rules.

2.1. Approval options

There are four different approval options available:

1. Separate owner approval: When activated, the approval by the owner of a configuration item only counts as the owner approval, regardless of which approval groups the owner might also be a member of.

2. Separate group approval: When activated, each approval only counts for one approval group, namely the first group that the approver is a member of and that has not approved the item yet.

3. Enforce approval order: When activated, approvals need to happen in the order defined by the approval steps. Furthermore, the owner of the item must approve first.

4. Enforce initial owner approval: When activated, the owner of an item must be the first to approve. Any approvals afterwards may happen in any order. If Enforce approval order is enabled, then the owner has to approve first regardless of this setting.

Approval options configuration

NOTE: Out of the above four, the first two are only relevant for group-based approval steps.

2.2. Approval steps

Approval steps can be configured for all of the project's approval types, which are based on a combination of the project's issue type schema, the organization's enabled modules (e.g. ALM, SBOM) as well as the custom document types and custom item types configured in the organization's advanced settings.

Approval steps configuration

Approval steps can be based on either groups or users. Every project will have a default set of approval steps based on the default groups configured in the organization. For group-based approval steps, it is also possible to define the minimum number of approvals required for each group.

NOTE: If a specific user is selected as an approval step, their approval will only apply to that step and will not count toward any groups they belong to. Additionally, if the selected user is also the owner of the item, their owner approval will automatically fulfill their individual approval step.

An example of the above would be:

User-based approval step example

In the above example configuration, Test User's approval will only ever count for their own approval step, even if they are a member of R&D Leads or Quality Managers. Additionally, if Test User is the owner of any Anomaly item in the project, their owner approval will fulfill their individual approval step. This is also reflected on all approval-related widgets in Ketryx by only showing the owner approval step for any Anomaly items owned by Test User.

2.3. Release document rules

By default, Ketryx applies the "Release" rule to all release document approvals.

However, this behavior can be overridden by creating custom rules for specific system document types. This is done using the Add new release document rule dropdown.

Add new release document rule dropdown

These custom rules can be removed at any time, reverting the behavior back to the default "Release" rule.

NOTE: These rules do not affect user-uploaded documents or custom release documents.

2.4. Advanced settings

The project-level approval rules can be configured further using the following advanced settings:

• Approval rules

• Approval workflow

3. Item-level approval rules

Users with the Manage item-level approval rules permission can configure approval rules for individual items in a project. This is an organization-level permission.

Permission for item-level approval rules

The configuration of item-level approval rules happens on the Record details page of an item by clicking on the Edit approval rules button.

Edit approval rules button

This will open a dialog that allows the user to configure the approval rules for the item.

Edit approval rules dialog

NOTE: There are a few specific limitations/behaviors related to item-level approval rules:

1. Editing an item-level approval rule always requires MFA to be enabled.

2. Editing an item-level approval rule will result in the creation of a new record.

3. Editing item-level approval rules is only possible when the item is not in a "Resolved" or "Closed" state. An exception to this is Git-based items, which can be edited even when the item is in a "Resolved" state.

4. The item-level approval rule will get reset whenever the item is transitioned out of a "Closed" state.

5. The "Approval rules" and "Approval workflow" advanced settings will not have an effect on items that have item-level approval rules configured.

4. Milestone-level approval rules

Users are able to configure approval rules for individual milestones in a project, similar to the item-level approval rules.

The configuration of milestone-level approval rules happens on the Milestones configuration page.

Milestones configuration page

When a milestone has a milestone-level approval rule configured, the rule will apply to both the milestone itself and all of its documents.

NOTE: The milestone-level approval rule will not be applied to the milestone's items (in case of a configuration item milestone).