Automating Email Notifications for Approvals

Use this feature to trigger email notifications by defining a single-cell named range called NeedsApprovalBy and programming the cell to list the role (e.g., VP, SE) required to approve the quote file.

• If this cell is non-blank when a quote file is saved, SDA will prompt the user to select the person (or people) assigned to the role from which approval is required as recipient(s) for the notification email.
• If there are multiple levels of approvers, program the NeedsApprovalBy cell to display the lower-level approvers before the higher-level approvers.

SDA will auto-prompt the user to send a notification email when the role listed in the NeedsApprovalBy cell has changed; it will not continue to auto-prompt once the notification email has been sent to that role.  However, the user can manually send a notification email via the Architect menu.  The user can clear out all approvals by selecting the Unlock quote and clear approvals option under the Architect menu.

A link to the quote file will be inserted into the notification email if the quote file has been saved to a location other than the user’s local drive.

Defining an ApprovalReasons named range, SDA will copy the text of all non-blank cells within the first column of that range into the notification email.

• To show a single reason within the notification email, define the ApprovalReasons named range as a single-cell range.
• To show multiple approval reasons all at once, perhaps for multiple levels of approvers, define the ApprovalReasons named range as a multi-cell range.

Below is an example of a table that the AM Administrator might set up to track required approvals at multiple levels, in this case the SE (sales engineer) and VP (vice president) levels:

In addition to the formula shown in the formula bar for cell L39, which is the NeedsApprovalBy named range, below are the formulas from the SE row above:

• In the Required column:

=IF(AND(L41<>””,K41=””),”Yes”,””)

• In the Approved column:

=IF(COUNTIF(ApprovedBy,I41)>0,”Yes”,””)

• In the Approval Reason column:

=IF(TotalSellPrice>25000,”Price exceeds $25k”,””)

Return to Approvals Menu