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Approval sets in Project Service Automation

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Important

Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation has evolved into Dynamics 365 Project Operations. For more information, see Project Service Automation Transition.

Applies to Project Service app version 3.x

Approval sets group approval requests together into smaller subsets of operations. This grouping allows approvals to be processed in order by Project and allows for retrying and sequencing. Grouping improves the reliability and traceability of approval processing for large volumes of approvals.

Approval sets indicate the overall processing state of their related records. When an approval record is processed using an approval set, the record moves from Submitted to Approved, and is unlinked from the approval set. If a record fails when it is submitted for approval, the record remains in a status of Submitted and the approval set is marked as failed. The approval set logs the error message of the failure.

Processing approvals and approval sets

Approvals that are queued for processing are visible in the Processing Approvals view. The system tries to process all the entries multiple times asynchronously, including retrying an approval if previous attempts failed.

The Approval Set Lifetime field records the number of attempts left to process the set before it's marked as failed.

Failed approvals and approval sets

The Failed Approvals view lists all approvals that require user intervention. Open the associated approval set logs to identify the cause of the failure. Selecting Retry adds to the approval set lifetime count, moves the approval set back to a status of Processing, and attempts to process the remaining records.

Configure approval sets

Enable the Approval sets feature

Before you enable the Approval sets feature, verify that there are no approvals currently being processed.

  • Go to the Project parameters page and select Feature Control > Enable Modern Approvals.

Turn off the Approval sets feature

Before you turn off the Approval sets feature, verify that there are no approvals currently being processed.

  • Go to the Project Parameters page and select Feature Control > Disable Modern Approvals.

Configuring the asynchronous threshold

When approval sets are created, processing moves to the background when the selected number of records for approval exceeds the indicated threshold. Use the Asynchronous Threshold field to configure when approval processing should be run synchronously or asynchronously. Valid values are:

  • Zero: All requests should be processed asynchronously.
  • Numbers greater than zero: Approvals are processed asynchronously only when the submitted number of approvals exceeds this value.