A handful of ideas explain almost everything in CLIF: the submission, the departments that review it, the approval tiers those departments belong to, the two levels of users in every department, and the Board meeting the submission is heading for.
Submissions#
A submission is one item for the Board of Estimates: a contract, an agreement, a grant, an expenditure and so on.
It belongs to a submitting department and is identified by its Submission Id, built from a prefix,
the two-digit year and a running number (SB-25-1234). Each submission holds:
- what is asked of the Board (category, transaction type, requested action, vendor, action period);
- the money involved (contracts and funding sources, which also drive the 1% for Public Art calculation);
- the background explanation, SMBA&D participation goals, employment requirements and impacted addresses;
- supporting documents, activity notes and a full change log;
- its approval boxes, its meeting date and, after the meeting, the Board's votes and minutes.
Departments and roles#
Departments are the City agencies, plus a few virtual departments used for Board office work (such as BOE Operations and BOE Clerk). Inside each department, people hold department roles. The standard roles are:
| Role | Used by | Typical work |
|---|---|---|
| Submitter | Submitting departments | Writes the submission and marks it ready (Level 1). |
| Submission approver | Submitting departments | Assigns submitters and approves the department's submission (Level 2). |
| Review User | Reviewing departments | Reviews the submission and marks the review ready (Level 1). |
| Review approver | Reviewing departments | Assigns reviewers and approves the review (Level 2). |
Department roles decide what you do on a submission. What you can open in CLIF (menus and pages) is decided separately by your access role.
Approval tiers#
Review happens in tiers, shown as columns on the submission's Approvals tab. A tier only becomes editable when every department in the previous tier has finished. The standard setup is:
Which departments appear in the Approval tier depends on the submission's category and transaction type; see How routing works. Your organization may have configured different tiers.
Approval boxes and the two levels#
Each department in a tier gets an approval box on the submission. Every box is worked by two levels of users:
- Level 2 (approver) assigns the box to a Level 1 user, and at the end approves or does not approve.
- Level 1 (submitter or reviewer) does the work and moves the box through In progress, optionally Waiting, to Ready.
A box is complete when Level 1 is Ready and Level 2 has Approved.
Statuses#
The same status icons are used on the Approvals tab, in the submission's side panel and on My Tasks.
| Status | Set by | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Not assigned | Level 2 | Nobody has been assigned to review yet. |
| Assigned | Level 2 | A Level 1 user has been assigned. |
| In progress | Level 1 | The submission is being prepared or reviewed. |
| Waiting | Level 1 | On hold, waiting for third-party information. |
| Ready | Level 1 | The work is done and ready for approval. |
| Approved | Level 2 | The department approves. |
| Not approved | Level 2 | The department does not approve; the box is no longer complete. |
| Withdrawn | Level 2 | Withdrawn by the submitting department (Submission and Validation tiers). |
| Deferred | BOE | Moved to another meeting date. |
| Rejected | BOE | Rejected. |
Meetings and cutoff dates#
The Board meets on scheduled meeting dates. Each meeting has a cutoff date, by default a week earlier, after which items are no longer added for that meeting. The header shows the cutoff countdown, and each submission's side panel shows the meeting it is scheduled for. The meeting date is chosen during Validation; see Meeting schedules & dates.
Finalized, archived and read-only#
- Finalized: the last tier has approved. The submission becomes read-only and the banner "This submission is finalized and currently in read-only status" is shown.
- Archived: a flag you can set in the side panel to move the submission out of the everyday lists. Archived submissions are listed with List archived.
- Read-only tabs: even before finalization you can only edit the tabs your tier allows; see Who can edit what.