Approvals can't be found?

I started playing around with approvals in 2.0.0.x and I am a bit confused.

So, I added to a defect that it needs approval but adding an Approval to the approver list and left it unassigned.

My assumption was that I could take the "Pending Approvals for me" query and change user to "anyone". Nothing found.

What am I missing?

I suspect it checks if it is assigned to anyone. If it's not assigned, then "anyone" doesn't fit the criteria for the query.

There's another condition "Approvals > Approver" that you can add. It has an option for unassigned. I believe that is the correct condition.

I suspect it checks if it is assigned to anyone. If it's not assigned, then "anyone" doesn't fit the criteria for the query.

There's another condition "Approvals > Approver" that you can add. It has an option for unassigned. I believe that is the correct condition.

Ah, that wasn't quite what I expected, but I get it.

So now that I have an Approval setup, how does one use it exactly? These don't typically show up in people's queries (since they are looking for work items). And how do they actually "approve" something?

What do you mean by "approve" something? The approval requires an approver that has to be assigned. When a user is assigned an approval, he/she changes the approval status from Pending to Approved/Rejected. The approval cannot be unassigned and change status.

Whoever you assign as the approver will have the work item show up in the Pending Approvals For Me query when that person runs it.

What do you mean by "approve" something? The approval requires an approver that has to be assigned. When a user is assigned an approval, he/she changes the approval status from Pending to Approved/Rejected. The approval cannot be unassigned and change status.

Whoever you assign as the approver will have the work item show up in the Pending Approvals For Me query when that person runs it.

So if you don't know specifically who it should be assigned to one could assign it to "Unassigned". I presume then the only way to find those that are unassigned would be to have a query similar to "My Pending Approvals" but find approvals that are NOT assigned?

Note that there are various enhancements requested for how one specifies
approvals. One of them that is probably relevant for this thread is
work item 29057, which asks to be able to specify a "role" for the
approver, i.e. I'd like a "Developer" to do a code review.

Note that for the special case of approvals for delivery, role-based
approvals are supported, i.e. you can require that "a Project Lead has
approved this work item for delivery".

Cheers,
Geoff

On 10/25/2011 10:08 AM, scottchapman wrote:

tmokwrote:
What do you mean by "approve" something? The approval
requires an approver that has to be assigned. When a user is assigned
an approval, he/she changes the approval status from Pending to
Approved/Rejected. The approval cannot be unassigned and change
status.

Whoever you assign as the approver will have the work item show up
in the Pending Approvals For Me query when that person runs it.

So if you don't know specifically who it should be assigned to one
could assign it to "Unassigned". I presume then the only
way to find those that are unassigned would be to have a query
similar to "My Pending Approvals" but find approvals that
are NOT assigned?

Note that there are various enhancements requested for how one specifies
approvals. One of them that is probably relevant for this thread is
work item 29057, which asks to be able to specify a "role" for the
approver, i.e. I'd like a "Developer" to do a code review.

Note that for the special case of approvals for delivery, role-based
approvals are supported, i.e. you can require that "a Project Lead has
approved this work item for delivery".

Cheers,
Geoff

Yea, I like that idea too.

I guess the current mechanism implies (which I also like) that one can say that something needs approval without specifically saying WHO needs to approve it. Kind of like having a work item without an owner yet. And one might expect that such an assignment would be made during a triage. The problem with approval without owners is that it is a challenge to identify them for triage or assignment.