Start and Manage Approvals

Approvals ensure that all relevant stakeholders in the Experience process have approved it. This article will walk you through the process of how to start and manage the approval process of Experiences.

1. When a student requests an Experience, you will see a notification on the Experiences tab in the left navigation bar.
2. Navigate to the Experiences page and click the Pending tab.

To view the details of a student’s Experience, click on the Experience. There are 3 different ways to start the approval process: from the main Experiences list page, a bulk action from the Experiences list page or the individual student’s Experience.

Start Approval Process for Reviewers

Option 1: Directly from the Experiences page by clicking the Start Approvals button

Option 2: From the Experiences list page as a bulk action

Option 3: From the Approvals tab within the individual student's Experience page

Approval Process

Handshake will send an email to the first approver to review the experience. After they approve it, it will continue to the next approver on the list. If the approver misses their deadline or chooses to not approve the experience, the approval process will be halted and “Needs Review”.

• How to Manage Experiences that "Need Review"
• How to Approve an Experience (as a Reviewer)

Troubleshooting

Reviewer doesn’t receive an Approval email 

If Reviewers on an Experience are not receiving approval requests, it could be because the emails are being filtered out of their inbox.

Some companies have strict IT policies about third party emails and can flag Handshake’s emails as spam. This section outlines a few steps you can take as a Career Services staff member to troubleshoot this process and keep the Approval process running!

Confirm the emails are not stored in a spam folder 

If an Approver isn't receiving the emails or the approval requests, we first recommend confirming that the emails have not been filtered through their spam folders. You can suggest the Approver take the following steps:

1. Check "spam," "promotions," etc, folder in your email inbox
2. Add handshake@m.joinhandshake.co.uk to your email contacts or address book
3. Check with your IT department and ask them to unblock Handshake or check for quarantined emails

Resend the Reviewer the Approval email

Once you've confirmed the emails are not stored in a spam folder, or have unblocked Handshake's domain, you can quickly resend the email to the Approver from the individual Experience:

1. Navigate to the Experiences Approvals Tab
2. Identify the particular Approver who is having trouble receiving the email
3. Select the Resend Email button

Send the Approval via link

If the Approver is still running into issues accessing that Approval link, you can copy that unique link to send to them outside of Handshake:

1. Navigate to the Experience and choose the Approvals tab
2. Copy the unique Approval link and send this to the Approver outside of Handshake
3. This will direct them to that particular Approval link (which they do not need to sign in to complete)

Manually update the Reviewer Approval status

If the Reviewer is still running into issues updating this information, they can share the Approval information directly with the Career Services office. From there, as a Career Services admin, you can directly update the information on the Approval to move the process forward!

1. Navigate to the Experience and choose the Approvals tab
2. Identify the particular Approver who is having trouble receiving the email
3. Click the Add Responses button
4. Here, you can directly update any of the Approval information for this individual, including custom survey questions (if attached), comments, etc:
5. Note: if you manually update this status it will send the approval email to the next Reviewer in the approval process!

FAQ

1. How much time does each Reviewer have to approve?
• The amount of days that you set in the template.
• How to Create an Experiences Template
2. What does the email to approve look like?
• Experience Emails