Order Guide Approval

[amacqueen]

I have set up an order guide for a New User Account and there are multiple selections for the type of account the submitting user can select, each of which is represented as an item - all works well apart from an issue with the approval email being incomplete for which I have submitted another question earlier today.

However I have been requested to see if I can incorporate all the approvals into one email rather than having an email sent for each item approval. I know that logically the way it is currently working makes sense however my boss seems to think our Managers may say to themselves after the third or fourth approval request 'I've already done this' and simply ignore the email.

Can anyone offer any suggestions as to how or whether I can achieve this?

Thanks in advance.

[Kiwipedro]

Hi Angus,

Yep, understand entirely...while having the approvals performed on each individual item allows flexibilty, it was clearly designed by someone who has never used it in practice: as you imply managers will not understand why they are obstensibly approving things several times.

Without knowing the finer details of your process, basically you have to apply the approval activities to the request (sc_request) workflow, and remove them from the request item (sc_req_item) workflow. It can get pretty complicated, but that's the direction you need to head in.

Regards
Peter

[amacqueen]

Appreciate the feedback Peter, I'm relatively new to workflow's. I have a 'Default Request Workflow' which essentially just pre-approves the request so the email can go to the manager for the item approval. I guess I would need to expand that so that if the requested item is yyyyy the go down the same type of workflow as we have for the requested item workflow.

Perhaps I could do that with an 'if' in the request workflow however I cannot find the requested item in the list of available conditions in the selection for the 'if'. I guess it might need scripting and that's where I hit a brick wall, any suggestions?

[Kiwipedro]

This is where it gets complicated.

Very, very basically Workflows run (typically) when a record is inserted into a table. So the default Request Workflow will run when a new record is inserted into the Request table. However, you can have multiple workflows applied to the same table and control which workflow should run by setting conditions when you create the workflow.

The Requested Item table is different: when you create a Workflow on that table it doesn't give you the option to set conditions. This is by design: the workflow that is run on the requested item is set on the corresponding catalog item (you'll see this when you maintain the item).

What I did to avoid all of this was to use catalog items and order guides for IT Procurement only, and use a Record Producer for New User Requests ("Systems Access Requests" in my nomenclature) which actually produced an incident (don't ask - this was what the Service Desk wanted).

The Requested Item workflows I pared down to a minimum (just two stages called "Fulfillment" and "Delivery" so when the user looked at the "My Requests" page they had something sensible to look at), and then created mulitple workflows for the Request table that sent the approvals off to the relevant departmental managers (with "if" activities that controlled how far up the chain it went depending on price). The starting conditions got complicated but this was, due to the fragmented nature of the business, unavoidable.

It is impossible to avoid scripting in this case (see the "forceReqItemUpdate()" function in this wiki article: http://wiki.service-now.com/index.php?title=Condition_Activities), as the Request workflow is essentially doing all the work, and the Req Item flows are just there to provide useful info and need to be nudged along via a business rule.

How you choose to make this work really depends on what is best for your business and what kind of crossover there is in the approval chain. Again, I think the system was designed by theoreticians and not by practitioners - you can make it work, but it's not as obvious as the demo would have you believe.

[amacqueen]

Thanks for that Peter I will investigate based on your suggestions.