Why we rewrote our Zendesk approval app from the ground up.
Introducing our new Approve app, completely re-written, re-imagined from the ground up to allow for mega flexible approval flows that are easy to set up in Zendesk. Catering for just about any Zendesk workflow you can imagine, whether it’s getting budgets approved, refunds, purchases, travel, discounts or as part of a change management workflow. The app combined with the power of Zendesk ticketing can be moulded to cater for a whole raft of use cases.
But why on earth, didn’t we just update the existing app, instead of rebuilding it from scratch? Well, to answer that we’ll have to go back to the beginning.
It all started back in 2016 when we were having a blast at the Zendesk Relate conference in Sydney. We were approached by a very large real estate software company that had some requirements around approvals that we were happy to learn about and build a working solution. But once the app hit the marketplace we were surprised by how many other businesses needed a solution in this space, and additionally, the sheer breadth of use cases that we were approached with. Over the years, as we built more and more features into the app, the feedback started to turn around and indicate we needed to simplify our offering. But rather than disadvantage existing customers by forcing paradigm shifts and a migration timeline on them, we decided to allow them to keep using the existing version and continue to support them as always.
This allowed us to put all our blue-sky thinking into the new Approve app with the aim to:
Massively reduce the learning curve in getting set up and building multi-step approval flows.
Simplify complex concepts like how manager approvals & escalations worked.
Increase the flexibility of who an approval can be sent to.
Leverage existing user profiles and groups in Zendesk instead of having to create them all in the app from scratch.
Eliminate the need for code in as many scenarios as possible.
Increase agent visibility and actionability of approvals to ensure things get done as quickly as possible.
The keystone in providing most of the above enhancements comes down to the single page approval definition builder.
On this page, it’s easy to add an unlimited number of steps, each of which you can set a threshold of how many approvers are required to say yes before the approval can proceed. And the ‘timeout’ feature on each step means that if the approvers don’t respond within the allotted period, then it will either automatically move to the next escalation point (up the chain of command) or, if no escalation points are left, the approval will, in fact, timeout in a way that allows you to build actionable Zendesk workflows to get the approval re-initiated.
For example, for a change management process, you may have the first step set so that it’s initially vetted by the requester’s manager. But if the manager is not available, you could have it automatically flow to the manager’s manager as part of an escalation step. Then it could go off to your Change Advisory Board group where at least 3 members need to say yes before it proceeds to the Information Management Board for final review.
Creating the approval message that references the contents of Zendesk ticket fields is now a breeze with the ability to search for any field and then instantly generate the placeholder reference.
For example, with this purchasing request approval, all you need to do is type in the names of the Zendesk ticket fields that the user fills in, and click to add it like this:
But no approval flow is the same, so we’ve made it so that approval action points can be renamed and recoloured appropriately.
For example, maybe you have a flow whereby when a new end-user creates a ticket for the first time, you need them to agree to your terms and conditions. So by eliminating options and having a single button to ‘Accept’, makes the flow seamless, like this:
Regarding the app’s improved visibility and actionability for agents. No matter what point an approval is within its lifecycle, the agent is able to see who the approval is waiting on right now.
For example with this Refund request, the agent can see that an approval request was sent to 3 agents 20 minutes ago as the first part of a 2 step approval:
This visibility allows agents to track down people pertinent to the approval’s progress, and if the agent knows that one or more of the approvers is away, they have the option to mark them as unavailable like this:
This removes those approvers from the pool and ensures the approval is not necessarily held up by absentees.
So no matter what your approvals process requirements are; from sales deal approvals, new hire request approvals, vacation request approvals to travel requests, this new Approve app provides next-generation capabilities. And for things like setting up multi-step approvals, improves the efficiency of setup time & effort by an order of magnitude!
Install the Approve app now from the Zendesk marketplace or get it as part of our full suite of apps by installing our Super Suite*
*Current subscribers of the SweetHawk Super Suite get our new Approve app for free!
