Why were Modern Approvals introduced for Project Operations?

Problem Definition:

Time entry approvals usually used to be an issue while approving when they were bulk in number. When the Project Managers (PM) used to approve more than 100-to-200-time entries, a lot of them used to get stuck in the queue and there used to be a rigorous process to go back and check which time entries are approved and which are still pending to be approved even after approving all of them.

Solution:

Microsoft has introduced Modern Approvals for such issues and so has introduced it for Project Operations. The way it works is, first we need to enable it on the Project Operations environment.

PN: once enabled, cannot be disabled.

Then we need to set threshold. This threshold decides the number of time entries to be approved synchronously. The prescribed Threshold from Microsoft is 5.

Now when the project managers approve a set of time entries, let’s say for e.g., 100-time entries they are all put in an approval set and are tried to approve again and again until all the time entries are approved successfully. Below is where you can check the project related approval sets.

Nevertheless, there can be some instances where there are failures in approving the time entries. These failures logs are also maintained in the approval set logs.

When the time entries are approved, and the approval set record is created, it is in the active state and can be viewed in the active approval set’s view over the project.

As soon as all the time entries in the approval set are approved, the state of these approval sets become inactive and can be viewed in the inactive approval set’s view over the project.

Conclusion:

Modern approvals have turned out to be a boon for the project managers when it comes to this tedious process of time entry approvals and can now trust the system that all the time entries will be approved successfully.