Enabling an approval process into team lists.

In a typical business process where employees require approval before continuing a certain action, such as completing a purchase of airline tickets, SharePoint approval process provides a nice solution.

Let’s say you have a SharePoint Task list where employees populate it with items that each denote their progress through the task of purchasing plane tickets.

Each item created represents a request to purchase a ticket.

To enable an approval process, I’ll go into the Task’s List Settings to select Version Settings.

I’ll change the first choice to require content approval and the last choice to only allow those users with permissions to edit an item. The second change means only those users should should be allowed to change the “Approval Status” will see those items waiting for approval.

Now when an item is created, its “Approval Status” begins with “Pending.”
When authorized users view the items waiting for approval, they may easily “approve” them by using each item’s context menu.

While approving each item, you may also add a comment to help explain your action.

Now the item displays its “Approved” status.