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Approval policies and escalation (administrators)

Updated September 15, 2026

Approval routing is driven by approval policies an Administrator maintains in the Configuration area. Each policy is one tier: a band of discount, the approver team that owns it, and how long a request may wait there before it escalates.

Create the approver teams first

Requests are assigned to a Dataverse team, so any member can decide and cover does not depend on one person.

  1. In the Power Platform admin center, open your environment, then Settings → Teams.
  2. Create one team per approval tier (for example, Deal Desk Approvers - Tier 1) and add the approver users to it.
  3. Make sure the members hold the Deal Desk Approver role. See Roles and permissions.

Create a policy per tier

  1. In the Deal Desk app, switch to the Configuration area and choose Approval Policies.
  2. Create a New policy with a Name and set:
    • Min Over % and Max Over %: the band this tier covers, measured in percentage points over the applicable pricing rule's Max Discount %. Min Over % is inclusive; leave Max Over % blank for the top, open-ended tier.
    • Approver Team: the team that decides requests in this band (required).
    • Delegate Team: an optional fallback team.
    • Escalation Hours: how long a request may sit Pending before it escalates.
    • Escalate To: optionally, the policy to escalate to. If blank, the next active policy by sequence is used.
    • Sequence: the evaluation order. Set it so tiers evaluate lowest band first.
  3. Make sure Active is Yes.

Policies are evaluated in Sequence order, and the first matching tier gets the request. A floor breach always requires approval; the discount band decides which tier.

With no policy and no approver team, a below-floor submit has nowhere to go. Configure at least one policy before sellers start submitting. In this version, tiers are global; scoping policies by segment, region, or product is not yet available.

How escalation works

Escalation is handled by a scheduled cloud flow, Deal Desk - Escalate Stale Approvals, not by an invisible workflow timer. If a request sits past its policy's Escalation Hours, the flow escalates it to the next tier (or the delegate) and records the escalation as a new request linked back to the original, which is marked Escalated. The flow writes a last-run marker, Escalation Last Run On, so a failed run is visible.

The schedule ships switched off. Turning it on is a one-time step: Turn on automatic approval escalations.

Whether a breach-free submit is approved automatically, and whether a pending quote is hard-locked, are environment variables rather than policies. See Approval behavior settings.