Introduction

Users wish to find an approval process in JOC Cockpit for situations in which users perfrom interventions.

The following roles are involved:

• An Operator wants to perform an intervention that requires approval.
• An Approver confirms or denies the intervention.

The basic functionality of the approval process includes:

• to implement 4-eyes principle: an Approver has to confirm the intervention of an Operator.
• to keep track of pending interventions.
• to offer fallback for a number of Approvers.

The feature is intended for branch 2.8.

Use Cases

Operator prompts Approver to confirm Intervention

• The Operator is prevented from directly performing an intervention. Instead, a notification is created for the requested intervention that is sent to an Approver.

• Fail-over and switch-over of JOC Cockpit must be supported.

• Prompts are persisted, and the list of pending prompts is available in JOC Cockpit, allowing Operators to cancel and to confirm prompts.

•  A specific role is required to confirm or to cancel a prompt.

Approver connected to JOC Cockpit

• The Approver receives a notification within JOC Cockpit for pending approvals. The notification explains affected objects and type of intervention.

• The Approver confirms/denies the intervention in JOC Cockpit.

Approver not connected to JOC Cockpit

• If an Operator prompts for confirmation of an intervention and the Approver is not connected to JOC Cockpit then the Approver can use a smartphone to confirm/deny the intervention.

• The approval process is handled by an external app, allowing to approve the intervention without connecting to the JOC Cockpit.

• For example -

• JOC Cockpit could generate a challenge code whenever approval is required for an intervention.

• JOC Cockpit sends the challenge (via an outgoing connection) to an external component that is hosted on a secure server with internet access.

• The external server, integrated with a third-party authorization app (ex-Google Authenticator), passes the challenge to the Approver's smartphone.

• The Approver receives the challenge on their smartphone and uses the app to generate the related response code. They then verbally communicate the response code back to the Operator.

• User 1 enters the response code into the JOC Cockpit to confirm the operation.

• If the Approver wants to cancel the intervention request, then the application can have a cancel button or an option to generate a cancellation response code

Capabilities

Prompt Notification System

When an Operator prompts an Approver to confirm an intervention, then the Approver should receive a notification in JOC Cockpit and via e-mail. If an Approver confirms or denies an intervention request, then the Operator should receive a notification in JOC Cockpit and via e-mail.

• Notifications should include details of the prompt and of the response (confirmed/denied).

• Users can customize notification preferences. In case that the Approver is not available, another Approver should receive a notification in JOC Cockpit and via e-mail.

Fallback User Notification

When an Approver is unavailable, another Approver should be notified to take over confirmation to ensure that the confirmation process is not interrupted. 

• The list of accounts for fallback to confirm an operation has to be predefined.

• JOC Cockpit should automatically check the availability of User 2. If unavailable, User 3 is notified and prompted to confirm.

Pending Prompts Summary

• Along with the real-time notification of high-priority prompts,  Approvers receive a summary of pending prompts at predefined intervals (hourly or daily basis) to manage pending prompts more efficiently.

Bulk Approval 

• The Approver should be able to confirm or to deny from bulk operations.

Audit Log Entries for Interventions

• The Audit Log contains all operations and approval data to allow users to identify any discrepancies. The Audit Log records all operations, confirmations, and denials. The Audit Log includes user IDs of both Operator and Approver, and intervention details.