How do I configure the Approval step in Catalog Builder?

[Myrddin Emrys]

I'm attempting to configure the Catalog Builder for my users. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to configure the approval step for new items built in the Catalog Builder; they all require approval, and I can't control where that approval is sent.

Approval (or lack thereof) doesn't appear in the Catalog Builder wizard at all, so I'm a bit puzzled. Is this something that users are simply unable to define?

I know that users can ADD an approval using the step-based request fulfillment flow, but that doesn't affect the initial approval for the RITM.

Thank you kindly for any assistance.

[Michael Fry1 · Accepted solution]

One Flow will work for several catalog items! The point is that's where you configure you process flow, not in catalog builder.

[Myrddin Emrys]

Thanks for the clarification. I'll track down what flow we have in our production environment that is bypassing the initial approval step and set that up in the dev environment where I'm testing. I thought it was configured in the Catalog Builder itself, which just demonstrated my ignorance. 🙂

[ny5_6]

If I understand the question correctly, you want to know how to configure what happens when you publish an item from within catalog builder, and that is the approval you are trying to adjust.

If so, there is a Subflow called "Catalog Builder - Item review base flow" that also calls a dynamic subflow based on the template subflow "Template: Catalog Builder - Item review."

The dynamic flow is scripted and calls the script include "CatalogItemReviewUtil," which looks up a system property that allows you to define the subflow you want to use (out of the box it is just the "Template" subflow, which just logs a message and returns "Complete").

If you want to build in an approval process, then you can create a subflow that has the same inputs and outputs as the "Template" and update the system property to use this flow.

You can find info on this in the documentation here (step 5): Setting up the Catalog Builder

Hope that helps!

[Myrddin Emrys]

This actually ended up being an error in our production instance; missing scripts prevented the submitted Catalog Items from being processed, so they got stuck 'In Review'. I didn't realize at the time that this was unintended behavior. It required a ticket with HI to resolve.