Oracle9iAS Portal allows you to manage and control the publishing of content on your portal through the use of approvals. Portal provides a special privilege for approvals, "Manage Items with Approval". Each item (document or file) added or modified by a user with this privilege must be approved before it is published to the portal. This prevents the publishing of items that have not been approved by the appropriate people in your organization. For example, you may want each of your company's product whitepapers to be reviewed by your legal department before they are published. Using approvals, you can easily establish an approval process that includes the legal department as one of the required approvers. This ensures that each author of a whitepaper cannot publish their document to the portal until it is approved.
An approval process is a series of one or more approval routing steps. Each routing step includes one or more users and/or groups (approvers) who must approve an item before it is published. Routing to the approvers can be in serial (one at a time) or in parallel (all at once). Each step can be defined to require a response by any one approver or by all approvers.
The approval process begins when a user with the "Manage Items with Approval" privilege adds or modifies an item on a page. The item is automatically checked out of the portal (so that it cannot be modified), and routed through the approval process based on how the approval process is defined. (See "Defining the approval process" for more information.) Once the required number of responses is received during a step, the process continues to the next step. The approval process ends when the final step is reached and the document is approved by the last required approver. The approval process also ends when any approver rejects the item.
There are many reasons to use approval processes. Maybe your company is trying to eliminate the costs of a paper-driven office in which hard copy documents requiring approvals, such as expense reports and travel requests, create bottlenecks for your workers. Perhaps you want to control what is published on your portal, and you want to ensure that items are reviewed before they are published. When you define approval processes, you allow the appropriate people in your organization to receive notification of pending items requiring approval, to review the items, and to approve or reject the items, all from your company's portal.
You can enable approval processes in Portal at the page or page group level. (Page groups contain a hierarchy of pages and sub-pages for organizing content.) You can establish approval processes that are unique to individual pages, or you can create one approval process for the entire page group.
Note: By default, pages inherit the approval process defined for the page group to which they belong.
Edit the page group properties. Click Edit Properties next to the page group name in the Navigator.
Click the Configure tab.
In the Approval and Notifications section, click Edit.
Select Enable Approvals And Notifications. This enables approvals for the page group. The page group administrator can now set up an approval routing process for the page group. This also enables notifications for the page group which allow users to receive notifications for approvals, page and item subscriptions, and item expiry.
Optionally, select Override Page Group Approval Routing to enable page managers to set up their own approval processes for individual pages in the page group. If you select this option, page managers can still choose to use the approval process defined for the page group. If you do not select this option, all pages in the page group use the approval process defined for the page group.
Click OK.
The Approval tab now appears when editing the page group properties.
Note: By default, when you enable approvals and notifications for the page group, a single step approval process is defined at the page group level with #CONTENT_MANAGER# as the default approver. #CONTENT_MANAGER# is any user or group with the Manage Content privilege, or the higher-level Manage privilege, on the page.
After you enable approvals for your portal, you can define the approval process for the page group or define the approval process for the page. An approval process consists of one or more steps in which a newly created or updated item must be approved before it can be published. When a step in the approval process includes multiple users and/or groups, you can specify whether:
The notification is sent to recipients in the step one at a time in the specified sequence, and all of the recipients must respond before the item is routed to the next step.
The notification is sent to recipients in the step all at the same time, and all of the recipients must respond before the item is routed to the next step.
The notification is sent to recipients in the step all at the same time, and only one of the recipients must respond before the item is routed to the next step.
After a user with the "Manage Items with Approval" privilege adds or modifies an item, approvers in the approval process receive a message in the My Notifications portlet indicating that an item requires an approval.
Note: A user with the Manage or Manage Content privilege on a page can copy an item to another page on which the user has the "Manage Items with Approval" privilege. However, the copied item must be approved before it displays on the page.
Approval notifications are sent to the list of approvers identified in an approval process step. An approver may respond to the notification by approving or rejecting the item in question.
The My Notifications portlet also displays notifications for item expiry and subscriptions. The user can click the subject of the notification to display its details.
Navigate to the page on which you want to add the portlet.
Note: If you do not see the page that you want to work with, you may not have the appropriate page access privileges. See your page group administrator to gain access.
Click Edit to switch to Edit mode.
Click 
in the region in which you want to add a portlet.
Note: If the region already includes items you cannot add portlets to the region.
In the Portlet Repository, search for "My Notifications".
Click My Notifications Portlet.
Click OK to return to the page.
When there is an item that requires approval, the approver receives a notification in the My Notifications portlet. The approver must decide whether to approve or reject the item. If the approver approves the item, a notification is sent to the next approver in the approval process. If the approver is the final approver in the approval process, the item will be published to the portal after it is approved. The approver may also decide to reject the item. If the item is rejected, the approval process is halted even if there are remaining steps (approvers). After the approver approves or rejects the item, the notification is removed from the My Notifications portlet.
Approvers can click the item's subject link in the My Notifications portlet to display the Approval Notification Details page. From this page, the approver can view the item, enter comments, and decide whether to approve or reject the item. The approver can also view the approval history of the item.
Approvers can also use the Pending Items Preview mode to approve or reject an item directly on the page. To access this mode, click the item's page link in the My Notifications portlet.
Notes:
Page group administrators can approve or reject any pending item in their page groups from Pending Items: Preview mode, or from the Pending Approvals Monitor portlet.
Page or content managers (with the Manage or Manage Content privilege on the page) can approve or reject any pending item on their pages from Pending Items Preview mode, or from the Pending Approvals Monitor portlet.
A Portal administrator can approve or reject any pending item.
You must be one of the current approvers, a page group administrator, or a page or content manager (with the Manage or Manage Content privilege on the page), to approve or reject an item.
Click the item's subject in the My Notifications portlet portlet. The Approval Notification Details page for the item displays.
Enter your approval comments and click Approve.
When a public or authorized user logs on, the approved item is displayed on the page.
Click the item's subject in the My Notifications portlet. The Approval Notification Details page for the item displays.
Enter your rejection comments and click Reject.
The item becomes a "rejected" item and no longer appears on the page.
The My Approval Status portlet tracks the item's progression through the approval process from the submitter's point of view. It essentially tells the user whether the item is still pending, or whether it has been approved or rejected. After a user with the "Manage Items with Approval" privileges adds or modifies an item, the user's My Approval Status portlet displays a new entry for the item with a "pending" status. (The item is not visible on the page until it is approved.) Only the current approver and the user who created the item can view the pending item in the My Approval Status portlet. After the item is approved or rejected, the user's My Approval Status portlet displays "Approved" or "Rejected" for the item.
Navigate to the page on which you want to add the portlet.
Note: If you do not see the page that you want to work with, you may not have the appropriate page access privileges. See your page group administrator to gain access.
Click Edit to switch to Edit mode.
Click
in the region in which you want to add a portlet.
Note: If the region already includes items you cannot add portlets to the region.
In the Portlet Repository, search for "My Approval Status".
Click My Approval Status Portlet.
Click OK to return to the page.
If you are the creator of an item that becomes rejected, the item will appear in your My Approval Status portlet with a "Rejected" status. Also, when you view the page that includes the item using Pending Items Preview mode, you will see that the item was rejected. You, as the item creator, can then edit the rejected item from the Pending Items: Preview mode. After the item is edited, the item is resubmitted for approval.
Note: All actions performed on the rejected item appear in the approval history for the item.
A rejected item can be deleted by the item creator, the page group administrator, or a page or content manager (with the Manage or Manage Content privilege on the page). The item's status changes to "Deleted". A rejected item that was deleted can be un-deleted. When you un-delete a rejected item, the item's status changes back to "Rejected".
Note: Rejected items that are deleted will be purged when all other deleted items are purged in the page group.
As mentioned above, the item creator can edit a rejected item so that the item can be resubmitted for approval. Page group administrators can also edit rejected items; they have special privileges that permit them to edit rejected items directly. For example, a page group administrator may want to incorporate comments in an item that is pending approval. The administrator can reject the item, note comments in the item's approval history (such as the changes that will be incorporated), and edit the item. The item, at this point, is still a rejected item. However, after the item creator reviews the page group administrator's changes, and updates the item again, the item becomes a pending item. The item is then directed through its approval process.
Notes:
Only the item creator or the page group administrator can update a rejected item.
Changes made by the page group administrator do not change the status of the item (it is still a rejected item), and do not resubmit the item for approval.
Approving an item
Setting up an approval process for a page
Setting up an approval process for a page group
Setting up expiry notifications for a page group
Customizing the My Notifications portlet
Customizing the My Approval Status portlet