Some fixes are too important for one person to make alone. With approvals, an action taken from an alert, such as restarting a JAMS Scheduler job or starting a Windows service, can need a second person to say yes before it runs.
You choose which actions need approval and who can approve them. Everything else works exactly as it does today.
How it works, start to finish
- The alert offers the action as a request. Instead of "Press 2 or say restart to restart job", the person on call hears "Press 2 or say restart to request approval to restart job." Cards, texts and the mobile app say "Request approval to …" in the same way.
- Asking acknowledges the alert. Someone has clearly taken ownership, so nobody else keeps getting paged for it.
- Your approvers are asked, one at a time. The first approver on your list is contacted on their usual channels and asked to approve or deny. If they don't answer within the time you set, the next approver is asked, and so on.
- The first answer decides.
- Approved: depending on your setting (see When approved), either the person who asked gets a notification letting them carry it out, or it runs straight away and they're told how it went.
- Denied: the person who asked is told it was denied, and by whom.
- Nobody answered: when every approver has had their turn, the request expires and the person who asked is told.
Approvers can also decide from the web app, under Approvals in the menu. An approved action can be carried out from there too.
Setting it up
You'll need to be an Admin. Open the integration where the action lives, for example a JAMS Connection, and find the list of actions responders can take from an alert. It's a dropdown that lists every action twice:
- Restart job: anyone on the alert can do it straight away.
- Restart job, needs approval: it's offered as a request and only runs once approved.
Pick one or the other for each action, or neither to switch the action off.
As soon as one action needs approval, three more settings appear:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Approvers | The people who can approve, in the order they're asked. Use the arrows to reorder. |
| Minutes to wait for each approver | How long each approver has before the next one is asked (2 to 60 minutes). |
| When approved | Who carries the action out (see below). |
Approvals are set per Connection, and the same approvers cover every action on it.
Where you'll find it
| Integration | Where the setting is |
|---|---|
| JAMS Scheduler | Each JAMS Connection's actions, plus Starting a stopped service on the JAMS services card |
| Windows Services | Each server's page, for starting a stopped service |
| Skybot Scheduler | Each Skybot Connection |
| GoAnywhere MFT | Each server, under What responders can do from an alert |
| Email flows | Approval for this automation, on a flow that offers to submit a JAMS job or run a script |
If a JAMS Connection uses folder and job routing, the Connection's approval setting covers every routing rule too. You don't set it again per rule.
When approved
Choose one per Connection:
- Let the person who asked carry it out (the default). They get a notification offering to do it now. It can be used once, within 15 minutes, because an approval to restart a job is about how things stood then.
- Carry it out automatically. It runs the moment it's approved, and the person who asked is told the result, for example "Done: restarted Payroll" or why it failed.
What can and can't need approval
Approval is for actions that make something happen on your systems: start, restart, rerun, continue, cancel, hold, skip, set to OK, submit a job, run a script.
These are never held up for approval:
- Acknowledge. Asking for approval already acknowledges the alert.
- Close, Resolve and Solve. The same buttons on the Incidents page work without approval, so requiring it on the alert alone wouldn't protect anything.
- Creating a ServiceNow, Zendesk or Freshservice ticket. That records the problem; it doesn't change anything.
- Escalate, and the mute and pause options for repeating alerts.
The dashboard's Start button
If starting a Windows service needs approval, it needs approval from the dashboard too. Clicking Start on a stopped service asks you to confirm, then sends the request to your approvers just as an alert would. There's no alert to acknowledge in that case.
Built-in safeguards
- Nobody approves their own request. If the person asking is on the approver list, they're skipped. If that leaves nobody, the request is refused and nothing runs.
- One request per action per alert. Pressing the button again doesn't send a second request.
- An approval is used once. Two taps, or tapping on two channels, can't run it twice.
- Everything is recorded. Every request, decision and outcome appears in the Audit Trail (Professional plan and up), with who did what and when.
Tips
- List at least two approvers, so a request isn't stuck because one person is busy or off shift.
- Keep the wait short at night. If your approvers are paged in the middle of the night, 5 to 10 minutes each keeps the fix moving.
- Approvers are reached on their own channels. Make sure each approver's profile has a phone number or the app set up. See Your Contact Details.