The instance of an approval template is called an approval workflow. Approval workflows are always created based on an approval template but are not linked to that template. I.e. changes to the approval template at a later point in time will not effect approval workflows that were created from this template.

An approval workflow is created either for a single feature or of for a set of observations belonging to the same feature, with the aim to approve this feature or this set of observations.

Conducting the workflow for a set of observations will either approve all observations or deny approval for all of these observations. Although one workflow can only approve a single feature the Application Server allows to start multiple workflows based on the same template for a given set of features.

A feature or an observation can be handled by any number of approval workflows, but only one approval workflow can be active at one specific point in time, all other workflows for that feature or observations are obsolete. An approval workflow in a final state can be marked as obsolete by users with the feature permission set approval inactive. An approval workflow is running when it is not in a final approval state, else it is closed.

An approval workflow can be created only for features or sets of observations where the Approval status of the feature is Ready or the Approval status of every observation in the set Ready.

As soon as a active approval workflow exists for a feature or observation the Approval status of this feature or observation cannot be set back to In progress. Therefore as long as there is an active approval workflow for a feature or an observation data for this feature or observation cannot be changed.

The creation of an approval workflows for features and observations is triggered manually.If the feature or observation has an assigned approval template and if that assignment is marked as auto starting that template will be used to automatically create an approval workflow as soon as a user sets the approval status of the feature or observation to Ready. If the assignment is not marked as auto starting the approval workflow can be instantiated manually.

Every user with the feature permission modify permission on the feature or the permission modify observations on the observations feature can set the Approval status to ready and can start an approval workflow.

Within an approval workflow the approval (or the denied approval) of every user with approval obligation is recorded. When a user denies approval the system forces the user to add the reason for denial as comment.

While obligations can be set to user groups in the approval process template an approval workflow will have only obligations for users. Therefore at the time of creation of the workflow the system will evaluate the group members and define obligations for each member of the group. Therefore that later changes to group members will not affect already created approval workflows.Approval workflows can only be created if the obligations in each stage of the approval template define at least one user who gets approval obligation.

Table 1: Summary of active and inactive workflow characteristic.

Table 2: Summary of running and closed workflow characteristic.

Within a stage users can handle their obligations (approve or deny) in any sequence. If one user denies approval in a stage the whole approval workflow is closed with status approval denied.