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Dane County adopts alternate, escalation and delegate options to cover approvers on leave
Summary
County staff and Granicus reviewed options for ensuring approvals proceed when primary approvers are absent, including out-of-office alternates, automated escalation, manual escalation, delegation and mobile access via Insight.
Dane County staff and a Granicus representative used a vendor training call to review and adopt practical ways to ensure time-sensitive approvals continue when primary approvers are unavailable.
The clerk’s office example dominated the discussion: Scott McDonald, the county clerk, is often the final approver for agenda items and occasionally is at conferences or otherwise away. Granicus demonstrated three options county staff can use to cover his approvals: setting an out-of-office alternate in Legistar, relying on the automated escalation function (which reassigns items when an approver misses the due date), or using the delegate button to insert a temporary approver for a single item.
Granicus staff explained how to set an automated alternate on a people record so that, if the assigned approver does not act by the due date, the system will escalate the item to the alternate and send an email notice. The vendor also showed how an administrator can manually escalate an in-progress sequence to another approver and how an administrator can delegate a single approval to another person without pausing the sequence.
The vendor demonstrated that an approver who wants quick coverage while traveling can log into Insight, the Granicus portal, on any Internet-connected device and approve items in bulk. The county clerk’s deputy, Patty, was advised to either ask Scott to use Legistar’s out-of-office setting or to be added as his automated alternate; either step will allow approvals to flow and generate a clear audit trail indicating the reason the alternate acted.
Granicus noted trade-offs: automatic escalation only triggers after a missed due date, while delegating an item is an immediate action that preserves the original approver’s record and time stamps the delegation. The vendor also demonstrated that out-of-office or delegation activity is logged so future auditors can see when items were reassigned due to an absence.
County administrators agreed to set up Patty as Scott’s alternate for the upcoming period and to encourage Scott to use out-of-office if he plans to be unavailable. Granicus said it would provide documentation and follow-up instructions for configuring alternates, escalations and delegations.
