Approval Notification exclusions not working

[Venjamin]

I am trying to exclude a notification. I set up a secondary approval notification for a specific item, but I can't seem to exclude items from the normal approval notification. I added the following: 

// Seems I should be able to put this logic in the condition builder (Approval for.Request Item.Item is Not 'Contractor Monthly Review') but not working
answer = true;
// 'Contractor Monthly Review' request item sys_id = 16172199db199410e4221fdc139619f2
if (current.sysapproval.cat_item == '16172199db199410e4221fdc139619f2' || current.sysapproval.cat_item == '760d2315db491450e4221fdc13961986' || current.sysapproval.cat_item == '7cc3b519893e08690fb70bacc5cba104d') {
    answer = false;
}

And yet I'm still firing 2 approval notifications. Any specific thing you're seeing that I might have missed?

[Brian Lancaster]

Try this:

// Seems I should be able to put this logic in the condition builder (Approval for.Request Item.Item is Not 'Contractor Monthly Review') but not working
// 'Contractor Monthly Review' request item sys_id = 16172199db199410e4221fdc139619f2
if (current.sysapproval.cat_item == '16172199db199410e4221fdc139619f2' || current.sysapproval.cat_item == '760d2315db491450e4221fdc13961986' || current.sysapproval.cat_item == '7cc3b519893e08690fb70bacc5cba104d') {
    answer = false;
}
else {
    answer = true;
}

[Venjamin]

Unfortunately no, it still fired both approvals. 

[Brian Lancaster · Accepted solution]

I see the problem, sysapproval is a reference to the task table which does not have cat_item on it. So we need to do a lookup with GlideRecord.

var gr = new GlideRecord('sc_req_item');
gr.addQuery('sys_id', current.sysapproval);
gr.query();
if (gr.next()) {//check to verify this isa catalog item
    if (gr.cat_item == '16172199db199410e4221fdc139619f2' || gr.cat_item == '760d2315db491450e4221fdc13961986' ||
        gr.cat_item == '7cc3b519893e08690fb70bacc5cba104d') {//do not sent notification
        answer = false;
    } else { //send notification when not one of the above catalog items
        answer = true;
	}
}
else { //send notification when not a catlog item
	answer = true;
}

[Venjamin]

This worked perfectly. Do you think I could do the same thing, except with the approval group? I ran into a small issue where the main approvals still need to fire for this same catalog item, and if I block the catalog item I get hit with a baby/bathwater situation. Essentially, I have 3 approvals for this record. 1 and 2 are standard management approvals, and a 3rd is an external group approval that has different formatting and requirements. 

Originally, I just had the notification only firing when it went to the specific external approval group, and needed to mute the "standard" approval going to that approval group.