Approvals Agent overview (preview)

Applies To: Project Operations Integrated with ERP, Project Operations Core

The Approvals Agent streamlines the approval process for time, expense, and material transactions. The Time and Expense Agent uses a Microsoft Copilot Studio agent to do an initial review of incoming time, expense, and material entries against policy documents that you upload for each type of entry. If a record meets the criteria outlined in the policy document, the agent marks it as Ready for approval. Otherwise, it marks the record as Needs review. This initial review makes the approval process more efficient for project managers. It also helps them avoid time-consuming corrections by reducing mistaken approvals.

Set up the Approvals Agent

An admin must enable and set up the Approvals feature of the Time and Expense Agent by following the steps in Set up the Approvals Agent using the Dynamics 365 Agent Deployment Tool (preview). After the feature is correctly set up, enable the agent by selecting Enable Time and Expense Agent in the Feature Control field on the Project Parameters page.

After you enable the agent, a new Time and Expense Agent tab appears on the Project Parameters page. Use this tab to upload policy documents for time, expense, and material submissions. For more information about how to write a policy document and examples of policy documents, see Set up policy documents for the Approvals Agent. If a policy document isn't available for a specific type of record, the agent doesn't classify approval records of that type.

You can also use the menu to set the mode of the agent to either Classify or Classify and auto approve. In Classify mode, the project manager must manually approve records that are marked as Ready for approval. In Classify and auto approve mode, the agent automatically processes records that are marked as Ready for approval for approval.

You can also control which projects the agent reviews. On each project, the Use approvals agent to review entries flag determines whether the agent receives time, expense, and material entries linked to that project for classification. To set the default for newly created projects, use the Automatically use approvals agent for new projects option on the Project Parameters page. This option sets the project-level flag to Yes or No when a project is created. This option lets you scope agent review to specific projects rather than applying it across every project in the environment.

Use the Approvals Agent

When a user submits a time, expense, or material record for approval in an environment where the agent is enabled and policy documents are uploaded, the record goes into a queue for classification by the agent. For each record that the agent classifies, it creates a new record that contains its classification decision. To view the list of records that the agent classified, select Approvals Agent in the left pane to open the Time entries reviewed by Agent page.

After you select a record in the grid, three buttons become available on the Action Pane:

• Approve – Process the selected record for approval.
• Reject – Reject the selected record, and send it back to the submitter. You're prompted to enter a rejection comment.
• Reassign to Agent – Return the selected record to the agent's queue for reevaluation. Use this button if the policy document is updated, and the record must be reviewed against the new document.