Platform engine · used by Enterprise Decision Intelligence, Alpha Engine and Enterprise Solution Architecture
Approvals reach someone who is actually there
Presence is the part of the intervention and escalation pillar that knows who is available to decide. People set their working status, nominate cover when they are away, schedule time off, and say what may interrupt them outside working hours. Routing uses all of it.
The business problem
The most common failure of an approval workflow is not the wrong approver. It is an absent one.
A decision that needs sign-off inherits one person's diary. If they are on a plane, in back-to-back meetings or on leave, the work waits — usually for days, for a judgement that takes under a minute. The requester cannot tell whether they are being considered or ignored.
The usual workaround makes it worse. Someone is given blanket cover for a fortnight, quietly inherits authority well beyond their normal range, and nobody records that it happened. That is a routine audit finding in delegation schemes, and it is the reason many organisations refuse to delegate at all.
Requests below your interruption threshold wait until the next working morning.
Used in order until one is acknowledged.
How it works
Four things a person controls, and one thing routing does with them
| Functionality | What problem it solves | Impact on the business |
|---|---|---|
| Set your working statusAvailable, focused, or out of office, with working hours and time zone held against each person. | Approvals are routed into an empty chair, and the requester cannot tell the difference between thinking and absence. | Routing skips anyone who is unavailable, and records why that approver was chosen. |
| Nominate coverName a peer or a subordinate to hold your approvals for a defined period, scoped by decision type and value. | Cover is arranged informally over a coffee, so nobody can see who currently holds an authority. | Delegation is explicit, bounded and visible to the people relying on it. |
| Reduce a deputy's range for the periodWhen delegating downwards, temporarily lower the trust levels of the people that deputy will approve for. The reduction expires automatically. | Holiday cover silently widens authority, and the widening outlives the holiday. | Cover stops being an accidental promotion, and closes a standing audit finding. |
| Schedule time away in advanceBook leave or travel ahead of time so cover applies automatically for those dates, rather than being arranged the morning you leave. | Absence is handled reactively, after requests have already begun queuing. | The queue never forms, because routing already knows. |
| Control what reaches you out of hoursSet the value or urgency at which a decision may interrupt you outside working hours. Everything below it waits for the morning; everything above it reaches you on the channel you choose. | Either everything interrupts, so notifications get muted, or nothing does, so genuinely urgent decisions wait overnight. | Urgency earns an interruption rather than assuming one, which is what keeps notifications worth reading. |
A peer or a direct report. Escalates to your manager if left empty.
Anything above this escalates rather than reaching your deputy.
Everything below this waits for the next working morning.
Routing
What happens to a held decision, in each state
Every routing choice is recorded against the decision, including which approvers were considered and why the chosen one was selected.
| State | What routing does |
|---|---|
| Available, in hours | Request delivered immediately on the preferred channel. |
| Focused, in hours | Delivered, but batched below the urgency threshold the person has set. |
| Out of office, cover nominated | Routed to the nominated deputy, with any temporary range reduction applied. |
| Out of office, no cover | Escalates to the manager above, with the requester told where it went. |
| Out of hours, below threshold | Held until the start of working hours in the recipient's time zone. |
| Out of hours, above threshold | Delivered immediately, on the channel chosen for urgent items. |
| No available approver at the level | Raised to the business unit governance contact and flagged as unroutable. |
Outside range · needs your approval
Non-standard discount on a renewal
- Value
- Above the requester's limit
- Requested by
- Regional sales director
- Reason
- Competitive bid, incumbent renewal
- Precedent
- 2 comparable approvals last quarter
Routed to you — the usual approver is out of office until 25 Oct
Business value
- Latency stops being personal. Decision speed no longer depends on one person's diary
- Delegation is bounded. Cover is scoped, time-limited and expires on its own
- Notifications stay credible. Out-of-hours interruption is earned, not assumed
How it connects. Presence sits inside the intervention and escalation pillar. It decides who receives a held decision; policy and trust decide whether one is held at all, and every routing choice is written to the register.
See it against your own approval chain
The fastest way to size the opportunity is to look at how long your held decisions currently wait, and who they wait on. Tell us roughly how your approvals work today and we will tell you what Presence would change.