multiple work flows per request item/ritm

humblecommitted · ‎02-06-2017

Hello Community,

I have a unquie requirement for a project I am currently engagemed in.

The client needs to have all requests items go through a certain stage of approvals and controls before the actual individual request are executed.

The first stage and control measure checks are similar and I was wondering if there was a way to have a workflow set be configured for all workflows and then once that phase completed/approved it will move on the specific request item.

for example, lets say there is a database request, vpn request, and a laptop request.

although each of these three requests items is fulfilling different procurement, the first phase of each would go through the same process i.e. approved by the requested_for's manager, confirm security agreement forms have been signed, etc.

once this is approved, then they will continue on fulfilling procurement.

I was thinking of putting the master workflow on the request level but that will not work when the request has multiple request items where different users would have different managers to seek approval from.

The reason for this requirement is if the process for 1st stage of approval / control check process is changed, i would not have to go to each request items' workflow to change the first stage, when i can simply change a single workflow, and leave the second procurement workflow intact, kind of like how variable sets would be used.

I apologize if this does not make sense but ask me for further clarifications if needed.

larstange · ‎02-06-2017

Hi

You won't be able to apply an extra workflow to all of your items, as the workflow is controlled by the "workflow" field on the catalog item form.

You can however make on "approval workflow" and call it as a subworkflow in all the workflows you use for items which need this approval. The subworkflow can also return the approve/reject result and you can react on that.

This also means that you only have to modify the subworkflow once to adjust the approval process

http://wiki.servicenow.com/index.php?title=Using_Subflows#gsc.tab=0

I use it for all of our items which involve ordering of Assets. We have a bunch of workflows using the same approval process, which run in a subworkflow

1. Use the "Return Value" activity to return the result in the subworkflow

2. Map the result of the workflow to the scratchpad

3. Then process the answer - here i do it in an If

View solution in original post

humblecommitted · ‎02-09-2017

Hello Lars,

I tried it out and it looks like it works smoothly.

One question, does the return value have to be "Yes" and are there are characters that would not work i.e. "." or "_", etc.

for example

Return Value == "prod.approved"

or

Return Value == "security.approved"

?

thank you.

ark6 · ‎02-06-2017

Hi ,

You might not be able to attach multiple workflows to your item, however you can attach multiple workflows to a single workflow using the parallel flow launcher.

You can add the approval first and then add an if condition to check the item name and then can define the parallel flow.

Regards,

Ark

humblecommitted · ‎02-06-2017

Thanks arka,

I will check it out.

larstange · ‎02-09-2017

You can make any return value you like. Its just a string