How to make Approvals Accepted Approved And No Longer Required?

[chris_choi]

Hello,

I feel this question is pretty straight forward, but wasn't able to find anything directly related, so my apologizes if this was asked before.

In our Change Module we have a CAB Approval that is currently awaiting Everyone to Approve. The reasoning behind this was we we didn't want the CAB approval to be approved without key approvals before moving forward. So what typically happens is when enough approvals come in from the right individuals our Change Manager will go in and mass update the Remaining "Requested" approvals to Approved and then to "No Longer Required". Approving all of them will move the workflow forward and setting them back to no longer requested keeps track of who didn't actually approve.

What we are wondering is if there is an easy way to set this approval so that it will accept both Approved and No Longer Required for a everyone to approve setting? This way the CM can just go in and set them to no longer required and the workflow can move forward.

I imagine we would use conditions based on script, but the extent of what I am familiar with is how to set the # of approvals, # of rejections, % of approves, etc.

Thanks to anyone who is able to provide any insight, on what we are trying to accomplish.

[Ken83]

Yeah that's exactly what our process was for. I used timers in the workflow to accomodate the requirements but it works very well. So hope that points you in the right direction at least.

[Uncle Rob]

This is why I'd suggest you revisit the conditions for your approval component.   You're doubling the work and erasing the valuable first part.   Essentially, you're tricking the workflow into moving forward at the cost of human manual intervention on every transaction.

In addition, one user being able to over-ride the approval of another is going to send auditors into orbit with the force of their mouth froth.   If auditors aren't a concern, then there's little point in having an "everyone must approve" condition in the first place.

[Ken83]

Chris Choi we are actually doing something similar to what you are looking for in what we call our "Emergency Change" process. I did all of this functionality in the workflow with the exception of some recent functionality added to the approval records as BRs.

So when a Change Request gets to the approval stage, our users are able to declare it an "Emergency". So when they click that button, it fires off the "Emergency Change" workflow. Our requirements were to wait at least 2 hours and if we have X amount of approvals at that timeframe, approve it and move on. Otherwise, we wait another 2 hours and if we have Y amount of approvals at that time, we approve otherwise, we reject and go back to a normal change request. During this process, because it is run in separate workflows, if the change is approved as an emergency change, that workflow will approve the Emergency Change Approval records only. So this part coincides with what you are looking for...

At this point, default functionality sets the emergency change records as approved but I needed to set any other previously existing approvals to 'No Longer Required'. I believe this to be the accurate context that rfedoruk is referring to. We no longer need those previously existing approvals but their status and what they contain still allow for accurate tracking. I do however, add a note to those approval records stating why it's being set to "No Longer Required".

To accomodate this functionality, I had to copy a business rule on the sysapproval_approver table called Run Parent Workflows and change the condition on it to fire when the state of the approval record changes to no longer required. Also, in the workflow, I had to add a transition to my approval activity that says "No Longer Required" and set the condition there as well. This way the workflow will respond when the approval records are set to No Longer Required.

Hope that helps!

[chris_choi]

Hey Kenneth,

So in the last part you mentioned "Also, in the workflow, I had to add a transition to my approval activity that says "No Longer Required" and set the condition there as well" does this mean you have approved, rejected, and now a no longer required option coming out from your approval?

We were essentially wanting to have the approval say approved like normal, but wanted the approval to understand that when our CM sets the remaining approvals to no longer required to treat them like an approval.