How to define catalog item approval workflow in Servicenow

[rin1]

Dear all,

A small piece of guidance/advice/idea needed. We got a new client (public sector) coming in and we are in the stage of defining their approval workflows for the Catalog item. The crucial problem is they don't have a properly maintained AD, which means some users has details like line manager, title, etc linked in AD but not for everyone. 

As of now, we have created a default variable set 'Please select your authorising Line manager' referencing sys_user table. The requester should select their appropriate line manager. And this variable set to be added for the service requests which needs approval. 

My concern is, what happens if the user choose the wrong approver? Everything will become a mess, but couldnt think of a better way than this.

Can anyone suggest how this can be delt in a better way. Has anyone gone through the same scenario, it would be really helpful if you could pour your suggestions.

Thanks,

Rini

[Jaspal Singh]

What I would suggest is instead of allowing users to select manager you can default it to route it to Manager in User table.

In case, as you say AD is not maintained correctly so I am assuming it would be empty. If so, you can route it as a fallback when there is no manager found to servicedesk team. They can then approve by checking out for respective user's manager over mail or so get it attached to request & approve instead. This would take care of audit as well in future if any.

[dmathur09]

Hi Rin,

1) First thing you could do it to auto populate the manager if exists. In that way half of your job is already done.

2) You can provide more details in the reference field like user's name, user ID and email ID which will help the user is selecting the right manager, generally people may have same name and user might get confused in selection.

3) Also try to apply some filter to the reference filed like active is true, not a web service user.

Regards,

Deepankar Mathur