Interpret approval-body administration history¶
An approval body is a group with defined membership and authority to make particular decisions. Its administration history records selected changes to that group, such as adding a member, changing a chairperson or delegating signing authority. Use it to investigate how authority was maintained. Use workflow and approval history for decisions on individual pieces of work.
Draft scope: this explanation follows the inspected recording implementation. It supplements the history reader guide; it does not introduce an administrative screen journey. Connected delivery, the presentation of assistant-assisted actions and initial reader review remain open.
Understand the recorded date¶
The history time is not always the time someone entered a change. Some approval-body actions use the date on which the membership or delegation takes effect.
| Recorded action | Date supplied to history |
|---|---|
| Create or update an approval body | The time the action is being prepared for recording |
| Add a member | That membership's effective start |
| Change the chairperson | The effective start of the resulting chairperson membership |
| Change a member's voting or signing authority | The time the action is being prepared for recording |
| Deactivate a member | The time the action is being prepared for recording |
| Add a delegation | That delegation's effective start |
| Deactivate a delegation | The time the action is being prepared for recording |
For example, a membership entered today with an earlier effective start is recorded under that earlier start date. A date filter around today can therefore miss the entry. Delayed delivery is another reason an entry may appear later than its recorded date. Compare the membership or delegation's effective dates, the action and the history filters before concluding that a change is missing.
An entry does not establish that authority is currently valid. Membership, active status, effective periods, voting rights, signing rights and delegation rules still determine what someone may do at the relevant time. A historical administration entry is not permission to approve or sign work.
Distinguish the person acting from the person affected¶
The recorded actor identifies who performed the action. A member or delegate affected by that action is a separate person. If an administrator adds you to a body, that does not make you the initiating actor or guarantee that the entry appears in My activity. Organization history filtered to one person also follows the initiating actor.
Membership actions can identify the affected member, and delegation actions can identify the person receiving the delegated authority. These are selected references, not a complete list of everyone whose authority or work may be affected. This recording path identifies the new chairperson or delegate as the affected person. It does not separately list the previous chairperson or the delegating member as another affected person.
Some assistant-assisted operations can supply an approved person identifier with a general HiveAI approved action label instead of that person's normal name and email snapshot. Treat that label as recorded context. It is not, on its own, evidence of who approved the assistant action, what was approved or which checks were performed. Support must use the authorized assistant and source records to resolve that question.
A recorded action is not a complete change comparison¶
The entry identifies the approval body and action. It does not contain a full before-and-after comparison of the body's settings, membership, voting rights, signing rights or delegation period. Use the authorized source record and its retained history for those details.
Some commands can reach recording even when the requested state already holds. Examples include deactivating an already inactive member or delegation, applying unchanged member authority, or selecting the person who is already chairperson. In the chairperson case, the existing membership's effective start can be used again. Similar descriptions or dates therefore do not, by themselves, prove that another real authority change occurred.
The recording path can also fail before a command saves. Conversely, a successful business result does not prove that its entry is already visible in history. Establish the saved authority state before repeating a command to repair an apparent gap.
Investigate an apparent gap or duplicate¶
- Identify the approval body and exact action, and distinguish administration from a decision on a request or other work.
- Check the current authorized source record, including the relevant membership or delegation and its effective dates.
- Check the history view, initiating person and date range. Include the effective start where the action uses it.
- Give support the body reference, intended action, affected member or delegate, approximate entry time, effective date and original result through the approved channel.
For management reporting, count the specific recorded actions that answer the question. These counts are not a count of distinct authority changes, current members, valid signers or completed approvals. Recording and delivery and retention and deletion explain the other limits on the available history.