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Approver Configuration

Smart Approval supports three approver types for routing approval requests. Each criteria line specifies an approver type and, where applicable, a specific approver or user group.

Approver Types

Direct Approver

The approval request is routed through Business Central's standard approver chain. No approver is configured on the criteria line — the app resolves the approver at runtime from the standard BC approval hierarchy.

When to use: Standard hierarchical approval chains where each user has a designated approver configured in BC.

Specific Approver

The approval request is sent to a named user, regardless of who submits the document.

  • Set the Approver ID field on the criteria line to the specific user's ID.
  • The same user always receives the approval request for that criteria, no matter who triggers it.

When to use: Rules that always route to a specific person, such as "All purchase orders over $10,000 must be approved by the CFO."

Setup:

  1. On the Smart Approval Criteria subpage, set Approver Type to Specific Approver.
  2. Enter the user's ID in the Approver ID field.

Workflow User Group

The approval request is sent to all members of a Business Central Workflow User Group.

  • Set the Approver ID field on the criteria line to the name of the Workflow User Group.
  • Each member of the group receives an approval entry. Depending on your workflow configuration, one or all members may need to approve.

When to use: Rules that require review by a team or committee, such as "Large capital expenditures require approval from the finance team."

Setup:

  1. Open Workflow User Groups in Business Central.

  2. Create or select a group and add the relevant users as members.

  3. On the Smart Approval Criteria subpage, set Approver Type to Workflow User Group.

  4. Enter the group name in the Approver ID field.

How Approval Entries Are Created

When a document is sent for Smart Approval:

  1. The app evaluates all enabled criteria for the document type.
  2. For each matching Approval-type criterion, the app creates approval entries:
    • Direct Approver — looks up the submitter's approver in User Setup and creates one entry.
    • Specific Approver — creates one entry assigned to the named user.
    • Workflow User Group — creates one entry for each member of the group.
  3. All entries are linked to the document and follow standard BC approval workflow behavior.

Line-Level Dimensions and Document-Level Approval

Approver calculation can use line-level data such as dimension values (e.g., department or customer group) from the document lines. However, the approval itself always occurs at the document level — the document as a whole is approved or rejected, not individual lines. Multiple criteria can match the same document, resulting in multiple approval entries from different approvers.

Related information: