Can we create multiple approvals at a time on Request form for an order guide?

[Devi12]

Hi,

I have a requirement to trigger approvals for an order guide on Request instead of RITM. In flow designer I changed the table name to sc_request. When I ordered individually it's working fine. But when I placed an order guide the all the approvals are not triggering. Order guide is having 5 items. Only 1 or 2 approvals are triggering remaining were skipped. So I got a doubt that can we trigger multiple approvals on Request form. Is there anything stopping approvals not to trigger.

Can anyone help me on this?

Thank you!

[Fabian Kunzke]

Hey,

Flows for catalog items are usually tied to the request item, not the request. This makes the interaction you are aiming at quite hard to archive. The reason behind that is how executing multiple flows for a request - this goes for workflows as well - makes these flows interact with each other. The following is my understanding of flows and workflows, and i am not 100% sure, if that is right. But it does explain a bit, why this is happening.

The request record itself runs under a workflow. This is - usually - the oob workflow for requests. Once the request has been closed, all other active workflows/flows are aborted. This is to prevent any permanently running workflows/flows for tasks which are no longer active. For your approval logic this simply means, that when one flow finishes - because it is running on the sc_request table now - all other flow are forced to finish as well, skipping their activities. 

This is the reason, why we keep the flows for catalog items tied to request items. An order guide will contain multiple request items within a request. Each request item can have its own flow/workflow run independently. Until all the flows/workflows for each item has finished, the request stays active. Only when the request items are closed, the request will be closed as well.

Now, from my personal experience i always recommend keeping flows for catalog items tied to the request item record because of this exact interaction and also because it allows the customers process to work independently in the case of bulk orders (e.g. order guides). And i would highly recommend it in this case as well.

It is possible to forego this issue and come up with your own general workflow you can use for requests instead of the oob workflow, but this will affect all other request processes as well. It is possible, but i would shy away from it.

In short: The answer you are likely to look for is not, if it is possible, but rather if you should do it. By keeping the flows tied to the request item you enable:
1) Better reusability
2) Better maintenance and administration due to separation of concern
3) Better catalog management due to being able to just switch out catalog items in order guides

I hope this helps your argument.
Regards
Fabian

ps.: Knowing it is possible should not lead to doing it. I did what you have asked here before and we have build it back for all customers. It takes away the flexibility for order guides.

pps.: Most commonly this originated as "we don't want to approve this 3 times, we already did". If this is your case as well, remember that you can approve open approvals by triggering a "close similar approvals" logic. That usually works a lot better. Just remember to add a comment to something like that, if it is needed. Something like "Automatically closed due to a bundled request here [link to the request]". I dislike this as well, but it's much better than actually changing how catalog item flows are meant to work.