SupportWhere do I go for support? · Technical Assistance – technical assistance for the MSApprovals is currently handled via email. Please contact msapprovalssup@microsoft.com for assistance. · Join the discussion on Yammer – stay connected and hear about what’s coming next. Also, use the forum to discuss MS Approval questions and find answers from other users.
About MSApprovals What is MSApprovals? MSApprovals provides individuals who are responsible for approving Microsoft internal transactions with a consolidated “modern” approval experience across a wide range of Line of Business applications. MSApprovals allows you to stay connected and manage your pending approvals from your Windows Store App and Windows Phone 8 devices. Who can use MSApprovals? MSApprovals’ target audience includes managers and employees across all geographies who are responsible for approving transactions across multiple business processes. Note: MSApprovals primary persona is the “Approver” and supports functionality specifically related to Approval actions. It does not currently include advanced workflow functionality or features that would be used by a “Submitter” persona. Instead, submitters should access their line of business application to complete their actions. Where can I get MSApprovals? Approving Microsoft internal transactions is now easier than ever with the latest release of MSApprovals. Stay connected and manage pending approvals from https://msapprovals.microsoft.com, or from your Windows 8 devices Devices with previous versions installed should receive an automatic upgrade when the device connects to the Company Portal service. If there are any issues with this process, you will see an “Update button” when accessing the MSApprovals application on the Company Portal. Please note that your Windows device must be running Windows 8.1 as MSApprovals is not backwards compatible with previous versions. How many people are using MSApprovals? Prior to February 2014, the MSApprovals “Pilot” had limited user adoption. Access to MSApprovals was managed through a distribution group and all participants were approved by the Business Owner supporting the specific transaction type being requested. Today, approvals for invoices, expenses (Expense 2.0), wire request transfers, international vacation requests and purchase orders (in Columbia and Chile) are generally available to all users with pending approvals. What business processes are currently supported on MSApprovals?
How can I get my line of business application on-boarded? Please contact msapprovalsinquiry@microsoft.com How does the MSApprovals align with other workflow strategies across Microsoft? MSApprovals showcases “modern application” technologies and design concepts that can be utilized by multiple Line of Business applications and workflow strategies. For business processes that have their own or are leveraging other work flow engines, MSApprovals can supplement that process by providing a single integrated approval experience. Common Questions I submitted a request. Why can’t I see it in MSApprovals? MSApprovals currently supports the Approver persona only, which means that if you are assigned a pending approval, you will be able to see and take action against that approval in the application. You can also see the requests that you have taken action on in your history. If you are the request submitter, you can track the status of your request in the line of business application only. My pending request does not have the same data as on the line of business application. Why is that? MSApprovals aims to simplify the approval experience by showing the relevant data most users require to take action. It is not a replica of the data shown in the original line of business application. To see all of the details related to your request, please go to the original line of business application. How do I edit documents within MSApprovals? On the web platform, users are able to export their historical records to an Excel file for reading the data offline. Users are able to save the file on their computer, but edits made to the file will not be submitted to the MSApprovals or line of business application. This feature is to support read-only usage of the historical data. I received a notification for a pending approval, but I don’t see it in MSApprovals. What do I do next? If you are using an application (not on the web), please double-check that you have the latest version installed. Windows Phone version 2.1.0.5 and Windows Store App version 2.1.0.14 are the latest. If you have a previous version, please uninstall the application, navigate to the Company Portal and download the app again. If you are running the latest application or viewing MSApprovals on the web but still do not see your pending request, you can also confirm that the action from you is still pending by visiting the line of business application. Otherwise, please contact MSApprovalsSup@microsoft.com for assistance. MS Invoice Related Questions I have a pending invoice flagged as Proof of Execution Required and I cannot approve it in MSApprovals. How I do approve this invoice? Please go to MS Invoice to provide the required documentation and take the necessary action. Where do I read line item detail on each invoice? MSApprovals will incorporate line item details associated to each invoice in August 2014. MS Expense 2.0 Related Questions Can I approve actions for expenses created in MS Expense 1.0? No. At this time, MS Expense 2.0 is supported by MSApprovals only. If an expense is managed via MS Expense 1.0 and assigned to a user for approval, the user will not see this pending expense in MSApprovals. Wire Request Tool (WRT) Related Questions Why can’t I see my pending wire requests in my Windows Store App? The ability to approve wire requests is available on your Windows Phone at this time. In FY14 Q4, you can take action against pending wire transfers in your Windows Store app and on the web. MyOrder Related Questions Which company codes are supported by MSApprovals? All SAFE and Interim Approvers will manage their purchase approvals in MSApprovals.
How do I access MSApprovals? As an Approver you will receive and email notification informing you that there is a PO pending your action. Approvers can MSApprovals directly from the notification by clicking on “Go to MSApprovals”
What is the MSApprovals Summary page? Accessing MSApprovals, will take an approver to a Summary page, which is essentially their approval queue. The tiles represent purchase orders pending approval, and are organized in alphabetical order by Project Owner.
What is the MS Approvals Details page? Upon selecting a Purchase Order from the Summary Page, the approver will land on the Details Page. The Header section of the Purchase Order, which is the area with the light blue background, will contain key data to aid you in your review. ADD SCREEN SHOT How do I “Approve” a pending Purchase Order? To approve a pending purchase order in your queue, queue first go to MSApprovals (there will be a link to the platform within the notification of a pending PO). When you access MSApprovals, you land on the Summary page. Click the “tile” for the Purchase Order, you would like to approve. This will open the Details Page for the respective request. (See question "What is the MSApprovals Details page" for more information.) Within the header you will see the button for "Approve”. Click and select the appropriate drop down item and add any comments you would like to be documented under the Approvals section of the header. Then click Ok. The tool will confirm that the action was successful and the tile for the Purchase Order will no longer be displayed in your Summary page. What actions can I take on a Purchase Order, in my queue? As an approver, you can approve the request, reject the request, reassign the request, add an interim approver, send back the request to the submitter and simply add comments. See following questions for more details on each action.
How do I Reject a pending Purchase Order? To reject a pending purchase order in your queue, go to MSApprovals (there will be a link to the platform within the notification of a pending PO). When you access MSApprovals, you land on the Summary page. Click the “tile” for the Purchase Order, you would like to reject. This will open the Details Page for the respective request.
Within the header you will see buttons for "Other Actions”. Select “Reject” from the drop down options
Next the reject window will open, where you will select the justification for the Reject action. Additionally, adding comments is required to further clarify the justification.
What is the difference between Rejecting a Purchase Order and the Send Back option?
Rejecting a Purchase Order cancels it in MyOrder and the Requestor can’t make any changes to the Purchase Order or resubmit it. The requestor would have to create a new Purchase Order request and start the whole process over. The Send Back option will send the Purchase Order request back to the Requestor to make changes. Once the changes are made, depending on the change, the Purchase Order Request will go back to the person that used the Send Back option, or it could start the approval workflow over.
If the PO is awaiting action in an approvers queue and it needs to be assigned to another approver, who can reassign the PO to another approver? Both the SAFE and Interim approvers can reassign a pending Purchase Order when it is in their queue. The Requestor/Project Owner has the ability to “Take Back” a PO to update the approval chain which will reassign the PO to the new approver.
How do I add an Interim approver for a pending Purchase Order in my queue? From the PO Details page, select the Other Actions button and “Add Interim”. Add Screen Shot
Who sees the justification and comments I add when taking an action? The justification and comments are documented within the header section of the Details page. Additional Approvers will have visibility to your comments to the transaction history of the details page. Add Screen Shot
How do I view my Action History? From the Summary page, Approvers can select the “View Complete History” from the “My History” section on the right side of the page.
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For which queues will I have visibility to in MSApprovals? In MSApprovals, approvers will only be able to see their own approval queue. Once the PO is approved the approver will see the approved PO in their “My History” view. If the PO is not pending your action, you can search for the PO in MyOrder to identify where it is in the approval chain, as well as with whom the PO is pending approval. For more information see on MyOrder’s Find training video Is there an ability to bulk approve multiple requests? MSApprovals currently does not support bulk approval of various requests to comply with approver review requirements, however, users that have MyOrder or MCIO SCM PO requests will be able to toggle to a “bulk review” view. This will allow power users to view many requests in a grid-like view. Is there a search option in the Bulk View? There is not an available “Search” field, however if you hit control ‘F’ you will be able to do a Web Search to locate a PO. Additionally, you can sort the columns, but clicking on the column name. How does the Over Budget indicator get calculated? The Over Budget indicator is based on the total buget actual and commited amounts for the IO. If an IO is not entered the Over Budget will not be calculated. Known Issues Opening WRT Documents Users are able to view various types of documents that are associated to the requisition to be approved, including PDF, Word, and Excel files. However, a known issues exists for wire requests documents that have a special character in the filename, such as !@#$%^&*. To access these documents, please view the wire request approval in the wire request tool, by clicking the "View Details in WRT" link on the details page. Sign-out and Remember Me Users are encouraged to click on “Remember me” when signing into the MSApprovals application on their private device. This ensures that the user does not have to enter their credentials every time they open the application and speeds up the application load time. However, by taking advantage of this feature, users will not be able to sign out of the application, which can be an issue if the user is accessing the MSApprovals application on a shared device. In the event of this scenario, the user should be directed to uninstall and reinstall the MSApprovals application. Load Times Users may experience longer than expected page load times in the following scenarios 1. When accessing the landing page. As the screen loads to show the current pending requests, it may take some time to refresh the screen and summary tiles with the most recent updates 2. When changing notification settings. Due to MSApprovals’ dependency on the Windows Notification service, the page may take longer than expected to refresh the page with the new setting selection 3. When the Line of Business application is experiencing latency. Users will be able to take action against their pending approvals, however, the page refresh with the updated approvals record may be delayed.
Please also note that depending upon the user location, application performance may vary due to service bandwidth and other variables. Lync Control Lync is not fully enabled on Windows Phone, which may prohibit users from messaging or calling the requisition submitter. Users should be able to email users as the icon by the submitter name opens the users native email application on Windows Phone. On the web, the Lync control may not reflect the active status of the submitter on the approval details page. Users should ensure that MSApprovals is listed as a trusted site to support this view, by 1. In Internet Explorer browsers, go to your Tools > Internet options 2. Navigate to the Security tab, select “Trusted sites” and click in the “Sites button” 3. Add https://msapprovals.microsoft.com to the zone and click close 4. Select Ok to close the Internet Options windows
Windows Store App Live Tile Updates Users may expect to see live tile updates on their Windows Store app, however, this feature will be delivered in FY15. MS Approvals cannot authenticate users who have an ‘&’ specified within the ‘last name’ attribute contained in the Active Directory. Impact: Users with an ‘&’ in their name attributes are blocked from accessing the MSApprovals application. Action Required: Users need to update their name details in //HRWeb to remove the ‘&’ from their last name, by following the attached instructions. Once the change has been submitted, users will have access to approve POs in MSApprovals within 24 hours.
Support: For questions or additional support, please reach out to the BuyCenter via CIM
Windows Phone display of website Depending upon the display parameters of the user’s Windows Phone, the MSApprovals application may render differently to account for the responsive design features optimized for popular resolutions. This is most often observed when a user switches between landscape and portrait view. In the event you are not able to view all details of a particular request, please try switching between landscape and portrait view or zooming in. |
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Keywords: MSApprovals, FAQ, approved, Purchase Orders, invoice