How to successfully roll-back / reset manual approver approval records (change workflow)?

[jas101]

Hi guys, does anyone have any working solutions for how to roll-back manual approver approval records?

Detail:

As part of our revised change workflows we have a 'Manual Approver' activity stage within an approval co-ordinator because of the need to allow change requestors to potentially add manual approvers (as well as the group approver ones that are automatically added).

It's apparent that following a rejection, when approvals are rolled back although all the approval records are correctly reset to 'Requested' (when 'Request approval' is re-clicked), the requirement for the manual approvers to actually approve is not there as seen by the workflow showing that manual approval activity stage as blue i.e. satisfied in terms of progressing the workflow (all the others are green indicating they're waiting approval - see below screen-grab).

I have found that the only way to ensure the manual approvers are required is to manually remove the manual approvers, save, re-add them back and then manually set the manual approver approval records back to 'Requested'!

This seems so clunky right? As such am just wondering whether you have any suggestions (other than not using manual approvers which has been made clear to me this is not an option!) as to how I can make this whole process smoother for change owners who have manual approvers added to their changes.

Thanks in advance.

[jas101]

Hi, sorry for delay. 

I don't think a single 'Approval -> Group' activity will work in our case though because all the group activities you see in the workflow above have different conditions e.g. the 'Approvers - CS-USA' activity will add group 'CS-USA Management' if Region is 'USA' and same for the other regions, in another the group members of Service.Impact assessors group are added (so dependent on Service selected).

I can add them separately not in an approval coordinator but then I'm back to not being sure how e.g. when 1 group rejects, all the other group activity stages are set as 'No longer required'.

***

Currently I'm back to the 'Manual approvers' sitting in the Approval co-ordinator. 

Everything approval wise is working as wanted except when there is a reject/reset this means when the change owner goes to reclick 'Request approval' they have to remove the manual approvers, save, and readd them before requesting approval to get them to go to 'Requested' and for the workflow to recognise that manual approvers are again required.

I'm wondering if I need to amend the 'Run script' - currently how is it determining if it is a manual approval or another one? Or maybe change the location of it in the workflow. I agree that if I can just force the manual approvers to go back to 'Not yet requested' after a 'rollback' this should get it working.

[Mark Stanger]

Yeah, the whole thing seems really odd.  Maybe you could just use the original script I gave you, but separate it timing-wise from the rest of the rollback processing by placing it after the 'Requested' approval action and an additional 'Timer' activity that you could have.  Even just having the timer wait 3-5 seconds before the 'Run script' activity to roll back your manual approvals would probably work if my theory is correct.

[Mark Stanger]

Just checking in on this one.  Did this final recommendation work?

[xiaix]

Thank you, Mark.  I was deleting those records via workflow script and it was causing all kinds of issues.

Your recommendation to

worked great!

[Community Alums]

Hi @Mark Stanger ,

What should be done if it is a group approval only. What should the script be updated to.

Regards

Suman P.