Status change approvals - how do we stop these freezing the plan?

[JamieHi]

We have project-level approvals set up for Statuses e.g. when status changes to Test, it goes to PMO for approval so we can check the artefacts of the previous stage. However, and our PMs are finding this reeallly annoying, is that when a status is changed by the PM, it goes to Pending Approval until the PMO have looked it at it, and during this time the plan is locked completely. The PM can't change task names, durations, planned hours etc. etc. I understand the reasoning for this, but is it possible to turn this 'freezing' off at all? Jamie Hill JLL EMEA

[EricLu2]

Hi: The only thing you can do is go to Setup – Processes – Approvals – Settings (upper right). You can click the box (Allow Editing the Custom Form when the project....) That's all you can do. Thanks, Eric

[JamieHi]

Thanks Eric. I tried that but it still freezes-out the plans :( (Bit of a weird option there as for project-level approvals, it's entirely based on a Status having been changed - no Custom Forms involved!) Jamie Hill JLL EMEA

[SkyeHa]

My team would have two scenarios/options (two different templates) here. Scenario 1 (your scenario): when you put a pending approval on a task, the whole point of having one is to freeze everything. Scenario 2 (the alternative): It's entirely possible that instead of having a status that says "test" you just create the next task for this Testing stage. This is going to freeze nothing and, if you set up your tasks correctly (so that the "Test" is not a predecessor for anything), the entire project will go galloping ahead without you. -skye

[JamieHi]

I guess the reason why we wanted to use the "Status" field was because this triggers an approval. We report on the status of our projects (Start-up, Design, Build, Closure etc.) to management and we want to have control over the statuses that our projects are showing. There is a specific reason for this: when a project moves into the next corresponding status (stage), this means that the set of documents that the stage requires have all been completed. These documents are of course all mostly individual approval processes, but we need to validate that all of the documents have been done/approved before we permit a physical change in the project status. Otherwise, our stakeholders will go: "why is this project's status showing as Build? the requirements document is still pending approval!" Does that make sense? Jamie Hill JLL EMEA

[SkyeHa]

it does, and I kind of misspoke below because I failed to read your question correctly but let me try again. The whole point of the approval on an object is that everything on the object gets frozen. I would say that if you didn't want things frozen at the project level you could put a pending approval on the task that when completed would normally trigger an approval--and perhaps you would name it in a specific way. In our world, after we design a draft, the creative director is meant to review the draft. Rather than setting this status at the project level, we set the approval on the completion of the "Design Draft" task. This gives us the following: - nothing frozen at the project level--the task is the only object frozen, so that one task cannot be changed - you can report on the status of all Design Draft tasks - you can report on pending approvals Is that closer to a workaround for you? I mean, in a perfect world as a system administrator, you would be able to set at a global level what "pending approval" means (what gets locked down), but I just don't know how long that kind of feature request would take to push through. -skye