02
ROLE
Proposed strategic topic and owned all design work
SCOPE
Suite-wide approval submission across products and document types
FOCUS
Modular approval foundations and cross-product compatibility
OUTCOME
A scalable, object-agnostic model for governance integration within the suite
01 / PROBLEM
Approvals are an important governance capability across the suite, but the existing experience was fragmented, overly dependent on specific document types, and unnecessarily complex and fragile to configure and submit.
Rather than a single flow, approval relied on a chain of interdependent configuration and execution steps across multiple contexts: defining approval-specific attributes for each document type, mapping those attributes to Process Governance variables, configuring workflows around expected participants, assigning participants at document level, and only then submitting the document for approval.
This made the experience hard to understand, hard to maintain, and difficult to scale across the suite, especially where document types did not support the same attribute-based model.
02 / PROCESS
I mapped the existing implementation, user flows, and dependencies, then reworked the experience around a simpler mental model: select a workflow, assign participants, and submit within the same context.
Because the existing flows were tightly interconnected, simplifying the experience also raised broader structural questions about Process Governance and its integration with other suite applications. One key question was whether governance participants should continue to be stored in document attributes at all, given that only some document types supported attributes, leaving others effectively incompatible with governance workflows.
Through iterative prototypes and key screens, I validated the direction with customer representatives and internal stakeholders, including engineers and support consultants, helping converge multiple proposals into a scalable concept with a clear path for future iterations.
03 / SOLUTION
The solution spanned two connected contexts. In workflow configuration, required participants were defined as part of the workflow itself, rather than through attributes configured separately for each document type. In document submission, selecting a workflow dynamically revealed the participant fields that workflow required, allowing assignments to be completed directly within the approval submission flow.
I designed a modular approval model and supporting UI patterns that made approval initiation more scalable and less dependent on document-type-specific setup.
This made workflow participant configuration more flexible, grouped participant assignment with its associated workflow and approval action, and reduced reliance on document attributes as the mechanism for governance integration. It also introduced interaction patterns that could be reused across the suite and extended to related governance capabilities, such as read-confirmation requests.
04 / OUTCOME
The work clarified a stronger strategic direction for approvals, supported earlier validation, and surfaced key architectural questions before implementation.
By shifting approvals away from document-type-specific setup and toward a workflow-centred model, this project established a more scalable foundation for governance integration across products and future document types within the suite.