Why would removing an approval activity cause a workflow to fail?

[jlaps]

The below screenshot is the original workflow for updating CIs, and works; it has been working for several years now.

We were asked to remove the Approval, so we did. The workflow APPEARS to work correctly-

Despite the lack of errors, and despite the table of previous values and updated values showing in the notes, which historically was the indicator that it worked... the CI is not actually getting updated.

Add the approval back in, and it works when approving the approval.

I created a business rule that watched for approvals on this ITEM, and set them to approved... and again it fails to update the CI even though the workflow completes successfully (wth?!?)

What could be causing the workflow to not work, just by removing the approval? What is causing the workflow to not work even if leaving the approval in, and using a BR to approve it? <-- This makes no sense to me.

Just in case, below is the text of the APPLY PROPOSED CHANGES run script-

applyProposedChanges();
action.setRedirectURL(current);
function applyProposedChanges() {
	gs.log("top_wf "+new GEAMSacmUtils().geamApplyProposedChanges(current));
		//if(new GEAMSacmUtils().geamApplyProposedChanges(current)) {
			var base = new SNC.CMDBUtil();
	base.baselineProposedChangesApplyChanges(current);
        //var base = new SncBaselineCMDB;
//base.applyChanges(current);
		
	}
//}

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Subhendu1]

Trigger the CI update through an event or a separate transaction instead of running it inline.
Avoid using a business rule to auto-approve, as it doesn’t trigger the same workflow transitions.