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Approving Travel Requests — Coordinator

Classification: CONFIDENTIAL — Internal Use Only Document: guides/travel-approval-coordinator.md · v1.0 · 2026-08-19 · GPUS-IT

This guide is for Shereyll Woodley, who approves travel at step 2 and coordinates the whole queue.

When you get an email

When an SMT member approves a travel request, it moves to you and you get an email.

The subject line starts [GPUS Travel] Approval required.

The email is short on purpose. It shows you the travel dates and the estimated costs — airfare, ground transport and lodging, itemised.

The traveller's name and destination are not in the email

This is deliberate, not an oversight. To see who is travelling and where, open the link. The portal is the only place those details appear.

The email comes from alerts@greenpeace.us, and Gmail labels it External

This is normal, permanent, and expected. It is not a phishing attempt and it does not mean anything is wrong.

Approval mail is sent by the portal's own server and relayed through the alerts@greenpeace.us account. That address sits outside greenpeace.org, so Gmail tags it External — the same way it tags mail from any outside domain. This is the steady state and will not change. It is not a temporary condition being fixed later, so you should expect to keep seeing the External label on every approval email indefinitely.

How to tell a real one from a fake. Any legitimate approval email:

  • comes from alerts@greenpeace.us — exactly that address;
  • has a subject starting [GPUS Travel];
  • links only to forms.greenpeace.us, where you sign in with your Greenpeace account through Okta;
  • contains no traveller name and no destination — those appear only after you sign in.

An email that asks for your password, links anywhere other than forms.greenpeace.us, or arrives from a lookalike address is not from us. Report that one. The External label on its own is not a warning sign.

Reviewing the request

Click the link in the email. Sign in with your Greenpeace account through Okta.

You will see the request in full — every answer the traveller gave, including their name, their destination and the purpose of the trip.

Your three choices

Approve — the request moves on to Kevin.

Return for revision — something needs changing. The traveller has to submit a new request; there is no way for them to edit the one you are looking at.

Decline — the request is refused. It stops here.

If you return or decline, you must write a comment

The form will not let you return or decline without one.

The traveller reads what you write. It is the only explanation they get. "Declined" on its own tells them nothing they can act on, so say what was wrong or what you need instead.

A comment is optional when you approve.

Where you sit in the process

You are step 2 of 3.

  1. The SMT member the traveller named
  2. You
  3. Kevin Toruno

Your approval does not clear the traveller to book — it passes the request to Kevin. Kevin is the last approver, and his approval is what releases the traveller to book.

If you return or decline, the request stops with you and Kevin never sees it.

Seeing every request in flight

forms.greenpeace.us/approvals

Because you coordinate travel, this page shows you every travel request currently moving through approval — not only the ones waiting on you.

What the list shows you

For each request in flight:

  • Which step it is on, and what that step is
  • Who it is currently sitting with
  • How many days it has been waiting with that person
  • When it was submitted
  • The departure date

Longest-waiting requests sort to the top, so the ones at risk of missing a departure are the ones you see first.

What the list does not show you

It does not show what is in the request.

No traveller name, no destination, no purpose, no costs. The list tells you a request exists and where it has got to — not what it says.

The departure date is the one trip detail on the list, because you need it to judge what is urgent.

When you can see the contents

You see a request in full when it is with you — when it has reached step 2 and is waiting on your decision — and afterwards, once you have decided it.

For a request sitting at step 1 or step 3, you see the row on this page and nothing more. Opening it will be refused. That is intentional: knowing a request exists is not the same as being entitled to read it.

Use this when something has stalled

If a traveller asks where their request has got to, this page answers it without your needing to open the request — you can see who it is with and how long it has been there.

Questions

You are the contact point for travel requests. For a problem with the portal itself rather than a request, contact GPUS-IT.

Document · guides/travel-approval-coordinator.md · v1.0 · 2026-08-19 · GPUS-IT · Classification: CONFIDENTIAL — Internal Use Only