Sooo, yes. I had the same problem and was finally able to get around it.
Unfortunately and undocumented, the Approvals in a Sublfow react the same as Tasks. See the docs for Subflows and Create Task Activity.
In our scenario, the user can request multiple roles with each role having it's own approval and fulfillment task for audit purposes. As the Request has a one to many to Requested Items, we did this as one Requested Item to many (Approvals and Tasks) with the subflow.
I was lucky enough to use the Parallel Flow with a Sub that was just executing Tasks. Using the suggestion of creatiing the Task using the Run Script activity I was able to achieve what I wanted. When I ran into the issue with a Subflow that had both an Approval and a Task, with the Approvals only generating one, I assumed the Approval record had to be created using the Run Script too.
And yes, that solved the issue. When the Approval record gets updated, it "nudges" the workflow which causes the next step, a Wait for Condition, to check if it needs to continue. The Wait for is scripted to check for associated approvals, store the state to the scratchpad for later checking and then mark any other approval as no longer required, just for that particular flow.
Maybe the pictures and code will help tell the story better.
The Run Script to create the Approval records, where the parent Requested Item record is passed to the Input u_request_item and after you save the necessary approvers to the role_approvers array is this:
workflow.scratchpad.approvals = [];
for(var i=0; i<role_approvers.length; i++){
var new_app = setApproval(role_approvers[i]);
workflow.scratchpad.approvals.push(new_app +'');
}
function setApproval(app_id){
var app_rec = new GlideRecord('sysapproval_approver');
app_rec.initialize();
app_rec.sysapproval = workflow.inputs.u_request_item;
app_rec.document_id = workflow.inputs.u_request_item;
app_rec.source_table = 'sc_req_item';
app_rec.approver = app_id;
app_rec.approval_column = 'approval';
app_rec.approval_journal_column = 'approval_history';
app_rec.state = 'requested';
return app_rec.insert();
}
From there, the Wait for Condition it's scripted as such:
// Set the variable 'answer' to true or false to indicate if the condition has been met or not.
var app_recs = workflow.scratchpad.approvals;
var app_state = 'requested';
var check;
for(var i=0; i<app_recs.length; i++){
check = getAppState(app_recs[i]);
if(check == 'approved' || check == 'rejected'){
app_state = check;
//Store approval state for later check in workflow
workflow.scratchpad.app_state = app_state;
}
}
if(app_state != 'requested' && app_recs.length > 1){
for(varj=0; j<app_recs.length; j++){
updAppState(app_recs[j]);
}
}
function getAppState(id){
var gr = new GlideRecord('sysapproval_approver');
gr.get(id);
return gr.state;
}
function updAppState(id){
var ga = new GlideRecord('sysapproval_approver');
ga.get(id);
if(ga.state == 'requested'){
ga.state = 'not_required';
ga.update();
}
}
if(app_state != 'requested'){
answer = true;
}
else{
answer = false;
}And no, a rejection of one separate approval won't set the overall Requested Item as rejected. Actually, I don't have anything setup to mark the Requested Item as Rejected if all individual approvals are rejected. Maybe save that for future enhancement.
Hopefully this helps and if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
Dennis
