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

[tahnalos]

Yes but I'm not sure if plugging in the Lease sys ID will work on the approvers form.   The Dictionary identifies the Approval For field as a reference.   Also looking at the business rule you brought up, it doesn't show where the document id would be queried.

[Mike Allen]

The business rule was mentioned because it specifically said (non-task).   It is just a business rule for controlling the emails that come from approvals.   It was only the title that intrigued me.   I still think it will work on a table not extended from task.   The only way to verify is to test.

[Michael Ritchie · Accepted solution]

The workflow approval activity will work on non-task tables.   But its important to note that only user approvals will work, group approvals require a table that extends task.

You are correct that "Approval For" references task, but you will also find a Document ID type field called Approving that will show up when the approval is for a non-task.

Edit: Here is an approval for a Knowledge article that I found in my demo instance.   The kb_knowledge table does NOT extend task.

[tahnalos]

Useful information.   But if group approvals cannot be used, does this mean the only way to trigger a group approval is to do so via code?

[Michael Ritchie]

The group approval workflow activity only shows up and is available when the workflow's table extends task.   The reason is task is required is Group Approval (sysapproval_group) also extends task and when a group approval is created it references back to the task.

In your User Approval workflow activity, you can check the Advanced checkbox and create a script to loop through group members and "push" them to the answer array which will require approval from a given group.