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Configuring your team for decision-making via Structured Approvals

This article guides you through configuring your Microsoft Teams environment and setting up a custom approval framework within Structured Approvals.

Configure your MS Teams environment

  • Select or create your Teams team
    • The Teams team will be the basis for storing meeting, agenda, and decision related materials and the default setup for access management
    • Ensure your team is Private
    • The name of the Teams team is recommended to be distinct enough to be easily connected with the focus of the project or decision-making forum (i.e. "Project Team" is not easily recognizable across different areas)
  • Ensure the owner and members of your team is correct
    • Owners will have increased privileges in managing the team, the meeting and decisions. The recommendation is that Meeting Admins and Leaders are owners in the team
    • Members will have standard access to published agendas, approve decisions and access other meeting related information across the meeting. 
  • (Optional) Add additional Channels
    • By default, most team has a General channel. Depending on your preferences for organization and process, it is recommended to have a dedicated channel related to the meetings within the same topic and potentially have multiple channels for different forums.
    • Example: "A marketing team has two different recurring meeting forums. One Meeting series for topics related to advertisement and campaign work, and one related to their brand. In the Teams Team for Marketing, they have created one channel where meeting series or ad hoc meetings related to advertisement is stored and one related to brand"
  • Add the Decisions Channel App/Tab to your channel(s)

 

Enable and configure your custom approval framework

Steps to configure:

  • In Team settings go to Decision Log
  • Select Structured Approvals for the team or specific channels
  • Choose Custom as your framework type
  • Enable Restricted Approval Process if you want decisions to be open for approval only when the Meeting Admin opens for approvals

    Define how approvals will work:

    Structured Approvals supports up to nine roles per framework. Each role can be:

    • Freely named (e.g., “Recommend”, “Agree”, “Decide”)
    • Ordered to reflect the logical flow of your decision-making process

    For each role, set a default configuration:

    • Pre-assign a user to always hold the role by default
    • Mark the role as “No approver required” if it doesn’t apply in most cases
    • Leave the role empty if the assignee will vary depending on the decision

    These defaults will define how roles appear on every new decision created within the team or channel.

    Per-decision flexibility

    While the framework defines defaults, the meeting organizer can adjust roles on individual decisions. In most cases, it's possible to:

    • Replace the default user with different person
    • Change a role from assigned to no approver required, or vice versa
    • Assign someone to a role that was left empty at the framework level

    This gives teams the ability to maintain structure while adapting to the specific context of each decision.

    Note: Only one user can be assigned to each role. If you need multiple people to hold the same role (e.g., two “Decide” roles), create duplicate roles with the same name and assign them individually.

    Adjust member information

    • For members validate and adjust the member information in Team settings > Member properties
    • Assign Affiliation (which organization unit the user belongs to)
    • Check if Org title is correct, and consider adding Custom title

    Integrate with Advanced Reporting Module

    • If your organization is using Advanced Reporting Module, ensure the new RAPID enabled team is connected to the reporting access structure
    • Approve connection to the Teams team by locating the email innovation and follow the steps

     

    Additional configurations

    • Delegate agenda access
      • If the Meeting or Meeting Series is organized by a user who is not the designated Meeting Admin(s), ensure the Meeting Admins have Agenda Delegate access to meetings created by the organizer
    • Join the internal Decisions forum
      • if your company has an internal forum or site for Decisions related information and documentation, ensure you locate and make yourself familiar with what is available from internal resources