Creating approvers for a table not extended from Task

[tahnalos]

Hello

We have a customized table that is used to track leases for our clients.   Recently a request has come to me to automate the termination of leases.   According to the proposed process, they want approvals to terminate sent out to the appropriate managers, and approval would kick off the process.

The problem is that the Lease table we are using is not extended from Task, and that I am aware that approvals are used on the Task table.   My immediate thought was to create a new table that would work in sync with the Lease table, but be extended from Task so that we can leverage the Approval Engine.   That got shot down by our project manager, as per our company policy, any modifications or extensions to the Task table must be handled by the CAB and that could take upwards of 3-4 months as there is a backlog of requests for modifications or extensions to the Task Table.

It has been suggested that we create our own approval engine specifically for Lease so that we can get around the CAB restriction and it was also suggested that it would take a couple of weeks to create a standalone approval engine.   I however do not want to do such a thing as this poses a maintenance nightmare and duplication of methodology.   However, CAB is refusing to fast track this approval for us to extend Task.

Is there any other way to hook approvals to a table not extended from Task?

thanks

[Mike Allen]

You could have a business rule that writes to the approval table, and a business rule on that table that fires the actions after the approval.   Then, you can make a relationship (related list) that shows the approvals that the record has.   I know it is a bit clunky and you'd rather use the approval actions in workflow, but this is a relatively easy thing to set up on your own.

[Mike Allen]

Looking into another issue, I found a business rule of the approver table that is titled 'Approval Events (Non-Task)', which leads me to believe that approval records do not have to only be on task.

[tahnalos]

Something to consider.   But wondering how does Workflow handle approvals on non-task tables compared to task ones?   This is important as I am aware that it uses the Task table as a reference for the ticket being approved.   If I need to modify the approvers table to allow for Lease references, this is also blocked as part of company policy as I am forbidden from modifying any of the core ServiceNow forms.

Thanks

[Mike Allen]

'Approving for' is a document_id field, not a reference field to a task.   I am thinking you could probably just plug in the approval activity in workflow and it will work.