# Approval Statuses Approval Statuses track whether an organization's data for a given Report Card domain has been reviewed and formally approved. Each approval status record ties one school or district to one domain and one school year, and carries a simple approved or not-yet-approved flag along with a record of who last acted on it and when. ## Contents * [How Approval Statuses Work](#how-approval-statuses-work) * [Approval Status Records](#approval-status-records) * [Approving and Disapproving](#approving-and-disapproving) * [Bulk Updates](#bulk-updates) * [Reviewing Pending Approvals](#reviewing-pending-approvals) * [Admin Dashboards](#admin-dashboards) * [Exporting Approval Data](#exporting-approval-data) * [Permissions](#permissions) * [Troubleshooting](#troubleshooting) *** ## How Approval Statuses Work When a school or district submits data for a Report Card domain, a corresponding approval status record is created to represent the review state of that submission. The record starts in a not-yet-approved state. A user with the appropriate permissions then reviews the submission and either approves it or leaves it pending. Each approval status record is associated with: * **An organization** — the school or district that submitted the data. * **A Report Card domain** — the subject area or data category being reviewed. * **A school year** — determined by the domain's configured year. * **An approval flag** — whether the record is currently approved. * **An audit trail** — the username of the person who last changed the record, and the date and time of that change. Once approved, a record can also be disapproved if corrections or resubmissions are needed, and then approved again. The workflow is reversible at any time by an authorized user. *** ## Approval Status Records ### What a Record Represents A single approval status record represents the review outcome for one organization within one Report Card domain. If an organization participates in multiple domains, it will have a separate approval status record for each domain. ### Viewing Records for an Organization You can look up all approval status records for a specific school or district at once. The results are sorted alphabetically by domain name, making it straightforward to see at a glance which domains are approved and which are still pending. ### Filtering the List When viewing the full approval status list, you can narrow results by: * **Organization** — filter to a specific school or district. * **School year** — show only records for a selected year. * **Approval state** — show only approved records, only pending records, or all records. * **Report Card domain** — show only records for a particular domain. * **Free text** — search by keyword across available fields. *** ## Approving and Disapproving ### Approving a Record To mark an organization's domain submission as approved: 1. Locate the approval status record for the organization and domain. 2. Select the approve action. The system records your username and the current date and time as the last update. The record immediately reflects the approved state. ### Disapproving a Record If a previously approved record needs to be reversed — for example, because data corrections are required — you can disapprove it: 1. Locate the approved record. 2. Select the disapprove action. The record returns to a not-yet-approved state, and the audit trail is updated with your username and the timestamp of the change. > Both approve and disapprove take effect immediately. There is no confirmation step. Verify you have selected the correct organization and domain before acting. *** ## Bulk Updates When you need to update multiple approval status records at the same time — for example, approving all submissions for a school across several domains — you can use the bulk update capability. Supply a list of approval status record identifiers together with the desired approved or not-approved state for each. The system applies all changes in a single operation and updates the audit trail for each record with your username and the current timestamp. Bulk update requires the same Edit permission as individual approve and disapprove actions. *** ## Reviewing Pending Approvals The portal provides a dedicated view of all records that are not yet approved, sorted by organization and then by domain name. This gives reviewers a consolidated work list without needing to filter the full list manually. Use this view to prioritize and work through outstanding approvals across all organizations. *** ## Admin Dashboards Administrators have access to two dashboard views that show approval progress at a higher level of aggregation. ### District Dashboard The district dashboard presents one row per district. For each district, columns show how many of that district's schools have an approved record for each domain. This gives state-level staff a snapshot of where approvals are concentrated and where gaps remain. You can select the school year to display, defaulting to the current year. ### School Dashboard Drilling into a specific district opens the school dashboard for that district. Each row represents one school. Each domain column shows whether that school's record for that domain is approved or not yet approved. Together, these two dashboards allow administrators to move from a high-level district summary down to individual school-level detail without leaving the approval tracking area. *** ## Exporting Approval Data You can export approval status data to an Excel file for offline review or reporting outside the portal. The export produces a spreadsheet where each row represents one school, and each domain appears as a separate column showing the approval state for that school. The file also includes district code, district name, school code, and school name columns. To export: 1. Open the approval statuses list or filter it to the organization or year you need. 2. Select the export option. The portal generates a download token valid for 30 seconds. The file download begins automatically. If the download does not start, try again — the token may have expired. You can optionally scope the export to a specific organization unit and school year. *** ## Permissions Access to approval statuses is controlled by role-based permissions. The following permission levels apply: | Action | Required Permission | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- | | View approval status records | Approval Statuses — Default (read) | | Create a new approval status record | Approval Statuses — Create | | Edit or update an existing record (including approve, disapprove, and bulk update) | Approval Statuses — Edit | | Delete an approval status record | Approval Statuses — Delete | Contact your system administrator if you need access to an action that is currently unavailable to you. *** ## Troubleshooting **I cannot see the approve or disapprove buttons for a record.** These actions require the Edit permission for Approval Statuses. If the buttons are missing, your role does not include this permission. Contact your system administrator. **I approved a record but the dashboard still shows it as pending.** Refresh the page. Dashboard data is loaded at page open. If the record was updated after the page loaded, the display will not update automatically until you reload. **The Excel export file is empty.** If no approval status records match your selected filters — organization and school year — the system returns an empty file. Confirm that records exist for the combination you selected before exporting. **The export download did not start.** The download token expires 30 seconds after it is generated. If the download did not begin within that window, return to the list and request the export again. **A pending approval I expected to see is missing from the pending approvals view.** The pending approvals view shows only records where the approved flag is explicitly set to not approved. If the record was never created for that organization and domain combination, it will not appear. Contact your administrator to verify that the approval status record exists. **I need to create approval status records for a new school year.** Approval status records are linked to Report Card domains, which carry the year information. When a new year's domains are added to the system, new approval status records can be created against those domains. Contact your system administrator if records are not appearing for the expected year. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://nimble.docs.otised.com/guides/approval-statuses.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. 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