Plan Approval - Multi-location approval workflows

Introduction

The Multi-location approval projects feature allows organizations to run a single approval workflow across multiple units—such as countries, regions, or retails—in one centralized approval project. This eliminates the need to create and manage separate projects for each location, saving time for administrators and simplifying the approval process for reviewers and contributors.

With multi-location projects, stakeholders only see content relevant to their assigned units, improving focus, speeding up approvals, and ensuring local compliance—all while maintaining central oversight.

Usage description

Setting up a multi-location approval project (Admin only)

• Multi-location setup is available to users with the Collaboration Administrator privilege during project creation.
• Admins select a parent unit, automatically including all its sub-units. Units and sub-units can be manually selected or deselected:
  • Selecting a sub-unit auto-selects its parent.
  • Unselecting a parent unselects all its sub-units.
• Only one branch of the unit hierarchy can be selected per approval project.

Approval project setting - Unit selection

Assigning Initiators and Reviewers

• Only users assigned to selected units in the Unit Manager are available as initiators or reviewers.
• Initiators must have the Collaboration Initiator privilege; reviewers must have the Collaboration Reviewer privilege.
• For reviewers, only users assigned to the highest level of the selected unit hierarchy appear in reviewer settings, ensuring consistent reviewer availability.

Example:
If an approval project is set under United Kingdom with sub-units London and Manchester, a user assigned to United Kingdom is available as reviewer for all sub-units; a user assigned only to Manchester is limited to that sub-unit.

Visibility of Multi-location approval projects

• Projects appear in the left-side navigation under the highest unit level the user can access.
  • E.g., if user A has access to United Kingdom, the project appears under United Kingdom; if user B only has access to Manchester, it appears under Manchester.
• Users only see assets submitted under units they have access to, ensuring privacy and relevance.

Approval project display for users with access to highest local unit United Kingdom

Approval project display for users with access to only middle local unit Manchester

Submitting assets or documents for approval

• Approval submissions are supported in both Place approvals (assets) and Produce approvals (documents).
• All materials can be attached to one unit only.

Submission behaviors:

1. Direct upload/submission (unit selection skipped):
   • If the project is linked to one unit only, or if the user has access to just one of the selected units.
2. Upload/submission with unit selection:
   • If the project has multiple units and the user has access to more than one, they must select which unit the asset or document belongs to before upload or approval request.

Important: Assets/documents can only belong to one unit. To change unit assignment later, re-upload is required.