Taking advantage of BuildMaster's built-in approval system allows you to enforce a process in your software application’s workflow that requires someone (or someone belonging to a particular group) to sign-off on a build before it can be transitioned through to its next environment. Approvals can be useful for any of the following scenarios:

• Lead developer must sign-off before the build goes into QA
• Two or three QA testers must approve the build before it can enter User Acceptance testing
• Application Lead must approve a promotion to Staging
• A Manager must approve any software going into Production

BuildMaster makes it easy to add an approval to your workflow and will automatically enforce the rule. Of course, approvals can always be overridden by Administrators of the system - but forcing the build in this manner will be logged.

To add an approval to your existing workflow, select Workflows from the sidebar navigation menu, then select the environment that would required the approval:

The Workflow Step page will display a listing of all approvals required before a build can enter this environment for the current application:

For this step in the workflow, I've already indicated that 2 managers must approve any builds going into Staging, in addition to the Lead Tester. To add a new approval, I would select the Add New Approval button:

On the Build Details page, I can see which approvals are required before I can promote the build from QA to Staging (in addition to the approvals already received for the previous step in the workflow, i.e. Integration):

If I try to promote the build without the approvals, I'll get a warning and the ability to force the build (since I'm logged in with the appropriate privilege to do so):

If I log in as the Lead Tester, a Manager, or the DBA, I have the ability to approve the build to Staging from the same page:

Optionally, users can subscribe to a notifier that will send them an email every time a build is promoted to an environment where they'll need to approve the build before it is promoted to its next environment. To subscribe to a notifier, select My Notifiers from the user navigation menu in the top-right of the screen and select the Approval Required notifier:

This way, our "tester" won't need to constantly monitor BuildMaster to see if he or she needs to approve something.