Cancel Approval Request and the Request after a specific time

[vedang_vaidya]

Hi,

Our Fulfiller Account Catalog has a lot of Approvals pending causing the tickets to stack up. The newest solution that has now been demanded is that the Approval be automatically cancelled after 30 days. I have been looking into this using the Schedule feature in the Approval task but have gotten nowhere. I'm guessing there is no place where we have specified what happens after the timer duration runs out, or that Schedule is simply the wrong place to implement this.

Can someone please let us know which activity can be used to accomplish this. We are not developers so some detail will help in this regard.

Attached is a screenshot of the Workflow.

Thanks in advance!!

[Dave Smith1]

The newest solution that has now been demanded is that the Approval be automatically cancelled after 30 days.

Ouch.   Why not just reduce the number of approvals needed?

When you say "cancelled", do you mean it's automatically approved, or automatically rejected?   I'd hate to think of it being the latter.

[vedang_vaidya]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the prompt reply!

In case my statement was confusing, when I said 'a lot of Approvals pending', I meant in different tickets.

There are 2 Approval tasks for every ticket created and are both needed in our process and cannot be skipped. The first Approval is not the issue as it never gets delayed. The 2nd Approval is the concern here as it is sometimes missed or the Approvers are not updated. Hence, if it is not Approved or Rejected within 30 days, we want the task to be cancelled and the ticket to be closed.

I was hoping that 'Cancelled' in this case would actually mean cancelled. We can use the 'Cancelled' State for this and Close the ticket. Alternatively, we need it to be 'Rejected'.

Please let me know if you can help in this.

Thank You!

Best Regards,

Vedang Vaidya

[Dave Smith1]

The 2nd Approval is the concern here as it is sometimes missed or the Approvers are not updated.

Has anyone investigated reasons behind this?

Hence, if it is not Approved or Rejected within 30 days, we want the task to be cancelled and the ticket to be closed.

That's kinda telling me that you don't mind approval requests being ignored.   How do your users feel about being treated that way?

Please let me know if you can help in this.

It sounds like what you want is to run a scheduled job that rejects any outstanding approvals (anything greater than 30 days pending).

However, I'm not certain this is actually what you need.   It feels a bit user-hostile to me, closing approvals just because they've been overlooked and not really considering the needs of the requester.   As an approver, it's telling me that if I ignore it long enough, it'll go away.

[vedang_vaidya]

Hi Dave,

As of now, that is the requirement. A new Generic ticket may be created for this Request without making use of the Catalog.

We cannot have it auto-approve the task without the Approver looking into it. The catalog is cost-sensitive and the request simply cannot be accepted owing to delays. There are improvements that will soon come up but for now, the requirement is that it be auto-rejected and the ticket be closed.

Can you please help with this? Thanks!

Best Regards,

Vedang Vaidya