Question about Request and RITMs

[Victor Monteale]

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a development that creates a Catalog Request programmatically. I first tested it in my PDI and everything worked as expected. However, in my company's development instance, the associated Flow Designer flow (triggered by Service Catalog) is not being triggered.

After some investigation, I found a difference in the generated Request (sc_request):

In my PDI, the following fields are automatically updated:

• Approval → Approved
• Request State → Approved

In the company instance, the Request remains in:

• Approval → Not Yet Requested
• Request State → Pending Approval

Because of this, the related RITM never reaches the request_approved stage and the Flow is never triggered.

I also verified that:

• No approval records (sysapproval_approver) are created.
• Other OOTB catalog items exhibit the same behavior in each respective instance.
• The issue is not related to the Catalog Item Flow itself.

My question is:

What OOTB process is responsible for automatically moving a Request from "Not Yet Requested / Pending Approval" to "Approved" when no approvers are required?

Is there a specific Flow, Approval Rule, Business Rule, plugin, or configuration that controls this behavior?

Thanks in advance.

[Tanushree Maiti · Accepted solution]

Hi @Victor Monteale 

Check this : Flow Designer Approvals Overview - Workflow Automation Center of Excellence

KB0681883 Catalog item workflow or flow does not start when the item is requested