CMAQ Project Tracking System User's Guide

10. Approval: The Approval Process

At least one user at the MPO, State and Division level has final approval rights over data submitted by users in the same organization. Additionally, users with approval rights in the State and Division can approve data that has been approved by the next lowest level. Project data approved by the MPO is reviewed and ultimately approved by the State. Project data approved by the State is reviewed and ultimately approved by the Division. And, finally, project data approved by the Division is ultimately reviewed and approved by Headquarters. The annual National CMAQ Report is based solely on projects approved by Headquarters.

To select a project to approve, click on the Approval tab. Select a project year from the dropdown list to retrieve a list of projects awaiting approval, and click Go.

(Note: If you need approval rights, contact the Division's CMAQ person or one of the headquarters people listed on the Help page under "Contacts.")

Main Approval Screen

If you have already reviewed the project data, check the box next to the projects you want to approve and click on the Approve Selections button at the bottom of the page. Clicking the Clear Selections removes any checks in the boxes in the left column.

Approval Actions on Individual Projects

Click on the Project ID link to view or change information on a specific project. The "Data Approval" screen will come up. From this screen you can approve the data by clicking the Approve button. You can also Edit the data, if necessary, prior to approving it. Remember that if you edit any data that the system will not save your changes until you click the Save button (not shown) at the bottom of the screen.

If you approve individual project data, a confirmation screen will appear confirming that the project has been approved.

Note: Once project data for a particular year has been approved by headquarters for the annual report, it is locked and cannot be adjusted through normal means.

If there is data waiting to be approved by you (or someone else in your organization with the same approval rights), when you first log into the CMAQ system you will see a note to that effect.

Lastly, you can choose to reject data and return it for clarification by clicking the Reject and Send Back for Corrections button. Note that the system automatically creates an e-mail for you to notify the users who submitted and approved the project data, and includes the project number. You can use this e-mail to give the reasons for rejecting the data. The e-mail automatically includes the project number.