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Over the span of a contract's life, there will often be times when approval is required for it to progress to the next stage in its lifecycle. LawVu lets you create approvals and attach them to most stages.

We call these approval phases. Approval phases can be chained together to create approval workflows. Approval workflows are then applied to contracts to control the contract's progression.

Approval workflows can be created and then saved as workflow templates which allow your organization to streamline and automate the approval process by providing a ready-made framework.

Approval phases are the building blocks of approval workflows.

Below is an example of an approval phase that an Organization Administrator added to a workflow template called 'Residential Construction.' By clicking the pencil icon, you make various edits and apply rules. Clicking the trash can icon, lets you delete the phase.

You have the option to edit the phase name, add or remove Approvers, arrange the phase order, and apply rules such as one that dictates the phase can be approved by anyone in the group or must be approved by everyone. Additionally, you can mark a phase as required or locked to prevent its removal.

Approval phases can also be created as required on individual contracts. When applying an approval phase this way, it is important to remember that it can only be applied to the current contract stage and that the approvers must be contract members.

Note: If a contract reverts to Draft or any prior stage where the ad hoc approval phase has been added, all manually added approvals will be permanently removed. This happens because these phases are not part of a contract workflow. If necessary, you will need to re-add the approval phase/s.

Approval workflows are simply a collection of approval phases.

When a contract encounters an approval workflow, it will pause the contract and then sequentially run through each approval phase in that approval workflow.

Once all the approval phases within the approval workflow have been completed, the contract will proceed to the next stage in its lifecycle.

Below is an example approval workflow consisting of 2 approval phases that we've added to the 'draft' stage for all contracts created using the 'residential' contract type. To add a phase, click the + icon.

Approval workflows in action

Rather than creating the approval workflows every time you create a new contract, you can create a template instead. Creating workflow templates is done globally, and they can be assigned to various contract types.

Read this article to learn how to create approval workflows from global workflow templates.