Are out of box workflows/approvals required to run a workflow?

KB15 · ‎03-17-2015

I've been looking around here and I just wanted some clarity on what to do regarding two OOB workflows. I'm not 100% familiar though I've used them in the past.

I built out a catalog item and a corresponding workflow in the sc_request to go with it. Two workflows will run, the custom one and the OOB Service Catalog Item Request or the Service Catalog Request. The first stage is "Approval" however in my case, this particular request/workflow doesn't need approvals. I don't necessarily want the stage of "Approval" to appear as the first one. It's not technically necessary.

Is an approval always required to make a workflow run? Is this just how ServiceNow workflows behave?

cwilker10 · ‎03-18-2015

So if you just auto-approve the REQ level then you'd have to add the Approval in your RITM workflows. You may find that all your RITM workflows require an immediate manager approval and then you'd just put that up at the REQ to make things a bit easier.

As far as "disabling" the OOB REQ workflow, you can simply mark it as inactive and just create your own workflow that just sets the REQ to Approved. I can definitely understand how the "Approved" widget stage could be confusing, but it does allow for more flexibility if you were to get into more complex Requests where you actually do want to approve a "bucket" of RITMs before you kick off their individual workflows. Hope this helps!

-Chris

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Uncle Rob · ‎03-18-2015

Ask yourself these questions:
Do my people order multiple things at once?
Does management think in terms of thresholds of approval? That is to say "if total price of ordered goods > X, we need to approve".

If the answer is no to those questions, you can probably abstract out the Request layer. Take Request of List views and references off forms. Just let customers interact with their consumed Request Items, and make sure the OOB Request WorkFlow just starts by auto-approving. It won't matter that it does, because nobody will see the Request.

Personally, I think its mad that SN made an arbitrary cost/approval methodology in a workflow barely anyone knows about.

KB15 · ‎03-18-2015

Thank you both.

This helped clarify my understanding of requests where request approval scenarios like this would come up. I did a little more searching and found this to be helpful: http://wiki.servicenow.com/index.php?title=Approval_Rules (gated vs process level approvals.)

So ultimately, approvals are required at the request ("gated") and item (in-process) regardless of how the workflow is designed. If there's no approval workflow on the request level, it won't kick off the item's workflow. It'll just sit there and wait for an approval. I would be nice to have an item level workflow just start if there's no requirement for approval but then again, there's probably a good reason for it...maybe.