Project plan approval feature allows the superiors to check and approve the project plan, which can be published after that.
This feature is available if you configure the respective settings in the required project type. To find the settings, go to Administration – Projects+ – Project Types, select the required project type and open the General Settings tab, Approve Project Plan unit. To learn more about these settings, see the respective Help section.
Sending a project plan for approval
To send a project plan version for approval:
click Send for Approval on the project plan editing page (fig. 1). When you click this button, the changes are automatically saved.
Fig. 1. Project plan editing page. Send for Approval button
Fig. 2. Project plan page. Send for Approval button
Fill in the required fields in the opened dialog box for creating an approval task (fig. 3) and click Send.
Fig. 3. Send for Approval dialog box
To *– select the task executor. This field is displayed differently, depending on the access settings of the plan approval in this project type. These settings are configured on the project type settings page, Permissions tab.
If:
the list of users, who can approve project plans includes only one user, this field has a default value and cannot be edited. The plan approval task can be assigned only to the specified user (who has the respective permissions);
the list of users, who can approve project plans includes several users, a user can be selected in this field. You can select only from those users, who has permissions to approve the plan in this project type.
This field is required.
Start Date *, End Date *– start and end dates of the task. This field is required.
Comment – add a comment to the approval task.
After you have sent the current project plan version for approval, the project plan page opens (fig. 4). This page will display a notification, that this project plan is pending approval.
If you check the Publish after approval box, you can configure automatic publishing of the project plan.
Complete all active processes:
Yes – when publishing the project plan, all the active process instances will be automatically completed;
No – when publishing the project plan, all the active process instances will continue.
Add users to project team members:
Yes – when publishing the project plan, the users that were specified as task executors but are not the project team members will be added to the project team members;
No – when publishing the project plan, the users will not be added to team members, i.e. they will not have access to the project tasks in which they are selected as executors.
Fig. 4. Page of a project plan, pending approval
After the project plan has been approved, its page (fig. 5) displays a notification about it, and the Publish button becomes available.
Fig. 5. Approved project plan page
If the project plan version has not been approved, it cannot be published. The project plan page will display the Send for Approval button.
Project plan approval task
The user, to whom the project plan version is sent for approval, receives an approval task with the project plan version attached. The page of this task looks like this (fig. 6):
Fig. 6. Page of the project plan approval task
This page includes the About Task tab, which displays the task end date, project, project plan and its version number. When you click the project name or the project plan name, their pages open. The icon is displayed to the right of the project plan name. Click on it, to open the editing page of this version.
Top menu buttons
Approve the project plan. When you click this button, a dialog box opens, where you can add a time report and a comment on the task. The comment will be sent to the Project Manager and displayed in the project plan. To complete this task, click Approve.
Reject the project plan. When you click this button, a dialog box opens, where you can add a time report and a comment on the task. The comment will be sent to the Project Manager and displayed in the project plan. To complete this task, click Reject.
When you click Actions or a drop down menu opens, which allows you to:
reassign the task (available if the project plan is not approved yet). Note, that you can reassign a task only if several users have permissions to approve the plan in projects of this type. If only one user has such permissions, you will not be able to select a user to reassign the task;
After approving the project plan version, the manager will receive a respective notification about the project plan approval status. This status is also displayed on the project page, on the Version information tab.
If the project plan has been changed (edited tasks, links, team members, etc.), then after publishing the task executors will receive notifications in accordance with the project type settings.
icon is displayed to the right of the project plan name. Click on it, to open the 
a drop down menu opens, which allows you to: