Approving Travel Requests — SMT¶

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

This guide is for the SMT members who approve travel: Sushma Raman, Kevin Toruno, Felicity Vonsuck, Marco Simons, Kalina Francis and John Hocevar.

When you get an email¶

When someone submits a travel request and names you as the SMT member they report to, 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 the next approver.

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 1 of 3.

You
Shereyll Woodley
Kevin Toruno

Your approval does not clear the traveller to book — it passes the request to Shereyll. 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. Shereyll and Kevin never see it.

If you cannot see a request¶

You can open a travel request while it is with you. Once you have decided, you can still read it, but you cannot change your decision.

You cannot open a request that has not reached you yet, and you cannot open one that was never routed to you. That is intentional.

Questions¶

For anything about a travel request, contact Shereyll Woodley.

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