Authorizations within BlueBox Business Systems

The Authorization Module in BlueBox (Finance > Authorizations) recently had an upgrade which allows for the tracking and approval of user-group assignments (ie if a user is being linked to the group Creditors and therefore being made a 'supplier' in the system, for example).



Initially the Authorization Module was developed to control the addition of financial documents in the system - and in the Authorization Control settings you will notice various fields pertaining to findoc characteristics - ie value, on-hold status, if supplier or if customer in group etc.

As data is added to the system, these controls are checked and if found to apply to a certain document would trigger the authorization process. Emails are sent automatically to the selected signatories and these need to digitally sign and approve/reject the request. A fully approved request is then emailed back to the logger and they have the option to then go and 'finalize' the original document now that it is approved. (See below for a new feature where this finalization can now be automated.)

The most obvious application of the new user-group assignment control is for the approval of Suppliers or Customers into your BlueBox system. When a new user is added to the system an entry is added to bb_users and a corresponding entry is made into bb_users_groups_link. Is this this latter table that is monitored by the Authorizations module - and when a user is being linked to the selected User Group (or a sub-group of it) - then the Authorization process kicks in.

How Authorizations work in BlueBox:

• Firstly the administrator will add a new Authorization Control. In the case of a 'Supplier check' the Authorization Control would be for the module bb_users_groups_link. As part of refining the specific user group that is affected by the control - the administrator can then select from either the 'if supplier category' or 'if customer category' - this restricts to only control if the group that the user is being added to is within the down line scope of the selected category.
  
• A new feature is the option to 'auto finalize after approval' - previously, and still by default if this option is not selected, the finally authorized data would need to be 'finalized' manually via the Authorization Module Dashboard once all signatories had digitally signed the request.
  
• Once the Control is in place it can be monitored on the Authorization Dashboard. As documents or new data entries are added they will trigger email requests for authorization to the various signatories and they will then log in and digitally sign to approve/reject the requests.