Electronic Record Approvals

Electronically approving records is one of the primary features of the VERA software. Using the VERA Action Menu, an author can route a record to one or more coworkers for their approval.

The number of required approvers and the required approval roles (e.g. Technical, Business, Quality, etc.) are determined by route templates. A route template is an application configuration—configured by the project administrators—that specify the minimum number of approvers and the minimum types of approvers for a certain type of record. The project administrators can configure as many route templates as necessary for the business rules governing the project. For example, if the company's policies require a different number of approvers for user requirements than functional requirements, then the administrators will configure two separate route templates, one for user requirements and one for business requirements.

When an author starts an approval route for a record, VERA will select the corresponding route template from the configured route templates and prompt the user to assign the required approval tasks. The author can then assign each task to a specific eligible user, or they can leave a task unassigned and thus available to be completed by any eligible user.
When a coworker receives an approval task, they can either approve the record by applying an electronic signature, reject the record by providing a rejection reason, or reassign the approval task to another qualified approver.

Finally, after all approval tasks are complete, the record will become fully approved. The record will then be locked from any further edits or rework, unless a new revision is created.
The following sections describe each phase of the approval process in greater detail.

• Routing Records for Approval
• Completing Approval Tasks
• Withdrawing Approval Routes
• Approval Route Information
• Email Notifications