Need to time out approvals after no response, cancelling the parent record. Should we Cancel or Reject the approvals?

[josh_tessaro]

We have written a scheduled job that sends an 'Approval Pending' reminder to approvers every 3 days. We would like to eventually cancel the approvals due to no response and close the parent record while notifying the requester.

Initially it seams like setting the <sysapproval_approver.state> field to 'Cancelled' was the right move but this seems to have no affect on the parent record (sc_request or sc_req_item). So my options are either to write all the necessary business rules/ script includes to cancell the parent record when the approval is cancelled or to set <sysapproval_approver.state> field to 'Rejected'.

Has any one else encountered this? I am trying to determine the bast way to handle this.

[Brad Tilton · Accepted solution]

It would probably be a little easier just to reject the approval and have it kick off all the automation through the workflow. You could have it add a note to the approval as well that it was auto-rejected or something like that.

[robpickering]

Josh, we do exactly this, but instead of canceling the approval, we auto-reject it.

Here is the Script Include that I use, which is called from a Scheduled Job.

There are two fields we added to the sysapproval_approver table:   u_num_of_reminders and u_reminder_date, that are used to determine the last reminder sent, and the total number of reminders sent.   Once you hit 3 reminders, the approval is rejected.   It can obviously be tuned to your business practice.

var ReqApprovalReminder = Class.create();
ReqApprovalReminder.prototype = {
       initialize: function() {
       },
       RequestApproReminder : function(){
               var appr = new GlideRecord('sysapproval_approver');
               appr.addQuery('state','requested');
               appr.addEncodedQuery('sys_created_onRELATIVELE@hour@ago@24');
               appr.query();
               var noOfdays = 0;
               while(appr.next()){
                       if(appr.u_reminder_date!= ""){
                               var dateDiff = gs.dateDiff(appr.u_reminder_date.getDisplayValue(),gs.nowDateTime(),false);
                               noOfdays = dateDiff.split(" ")[0];
                       }
                       if((appr.u_num_of_reminders == "") || (appr.u_num_of_reminders == 0)) {
                               //gs.eventQueue("reminder.emails", appr, gs.getUserID(), gs.getUserName());
                               // If you want to some specific order guide uncomment if
                               //if(appr.sysapproval.u_order_guide == 'OrderGuid_Sys_is'){       
                               gs.eventQueue("approval.reminders", appr, appr.approver.sys_id, appr.approver.name);
                               appr.u_num_of_reminders += 1;   // 1st Reminder sent
                               appr.u_reminder_date = gs.nowDateTime();                               
                               //}
                         } else if ((appr.u_num_of_reminders == 1) && (noOfdays > 2)) {
                               //if(appr.sysapproval.u_order_guide == 'OrderGuid_Sys_is'){
                               gs.eventQueue("approval.reminders", appr, appr.approver.sys_id, appr.approver.name);
                               appr.u_num_of_reminders += 1;// 2nd Reminder sent
                               appr.u_reminder_date = gs.nowDateTime();
                               //}               
                       } else if ((appr.u_num_of_reminders == 2) && (noOfdays > 10)) {
                               //if(appr.sysapproval.u_order_guide == 'OrderGuid_Sys_is'){
                               gs.eventQueue("approval.cancelled", appr, appr.approver.sys_id, appr.approver.name);
                               appr.state = 'rejected'; // Now Request Cancelled
                               appr.comments = 'Approval automatically rejected by system due to time expiration';
                               appr.u_num_of_reminders += 1;
                               appr.u_reminder_date = gs.nowDateTime();
                                                       
                               //var reqNum = appr.sysapproval.number;
                               //this._cancellRequest(reqNum);                       
                               //}
                       }
                       appr.update();
               }
       },
       _cancellRequest: function(reqNum){                       
               var scReq = new GlideRecord("sc_request");
               scReq.addQuery('number',reqNum);
               scReq.query();
               if(scReq.next()){                       
                       scReq.state = 4;
                       scReq.stage = 'closed_incomplete';
                       scReq.request_state = 'closed_cancelled';
                       scReq.update();
               }
       }};

[josh_tessaro]

Thie is close to what I am trying to do. Does cancelling the request in this manner leave the approval record and Requested items open?

[robpickering]

That's what _cancelrequest will do, but I didn't implement it, because our workflow automatically cancels the requests whenever the approval is rejected, so we rely on the Workflow to handle those issues, not the Script Include.

-Rob