KB with Two Approvals - Group then Manager

[Heidi Rawson1]

• I have created a KB that requires two approvals to publish an article.
• The two approvals are 1st level group, 2nd level manager of the group.
• I set the KB up with Approval - Publish and listed the group managers there but I don't think that matters.
• When I create Articles, I set them up to use Ownership Groups, as mandatory, with ownership group approval.
• That is working well for the first approval. It is requiring the first group to approve at the peer level.
• The issue I'm having is how to get the second level approval, the manager from the ownership group to get the next approval. Every group manager will have to approve after their group approval.
• All the groups were added to the Type: Knowledge, and role: knowledge_group_member.
• All the Managers are assigned as manager to their groups, and have been given the role knowledge_group_manager.

If anyone has done two-level approvals. I may be on the wrong track, or on the right track and missing a link! Appreciate the assistance.

[EricG · Accepted solution]

Funny you  should post this, I'm in the middle of updating the KB for just such a purpose.

A screenshot of your KB and Workflow would be helpful.

What I found was that i copied the OOB Approval Publish workflow, copied the Approval activity and updated accordingly. Here is why my KB looks like.

Here is the Workflows i set in the KB itself

I found that approvals for KB are different than normal Approvals and you need the Approve/Not Approved/Delete options

By copying the OOB WF, it is working form me on First and Second approvals.

[EricG · Accepted solution]

Funny you  should post this, I'm in the middle of updating the KB for just such a purpose.

A screenshot of your KB and Workflow would be helpful.

What I found was that i copied the OOB Approval Publish workflow, copied the Approval activity and updated accordingly. Here is why my KB looks like.

Here is the Workflows i set in the KB itself

I found that approvals for KB are different than normal Approvals and you need the Approve/Not Approved/Delete options

By copying the OOB WF, it is working form me on First and Second approvals.

[Heidi Rawson1]

Thank you for responding! I haven't changed the approval workflow yet from Approval - Published. I created another Approval workflow, Approval Manager, and I tried to get it to work with scripting, and that was a fail.

I just recreated the workflow by copying the Publish Approval workflow as its probably easier to modify that workflow.

In the first Review Stage, I have tried two things. First, I put the 7 groups that are ownership groups. The approval worked, however it didn't know how to segregate what ownership group so it sent the approval to all 7 groups. Originally it was working fine by just having the article go to ownership group for approval, but I can't get it to then go to manager. So I'm having an issue allowing it to go to ownership group first, then the ownership group manager second.

[EricG]

I think you should be able to use the Field References to pull that in and/or drill down to the item you need.  No?  I'm extremely lazy when it comes to WF Approvals and scripting.  I too can't get them to always populate correct.

Yes - adding the seven groups would send the approval to everyone.

My Suggestion would be to have "Review" approval by Ownership Group or Ownership Group manager.

Then to the KB Owner and/or KB Managers for final approval to publish.

[Dave Littlejohn · Accepted solution]

Agreeing with Eric. You can set up the workflow like:

For the first approval (Ownership Group), you can use the Field References (Red Square in following screenshot) under Groups to select the field Ownership Group field (highlighted in list in blue in following screenshot). Once selected, you should see $(ownership_group) listed for the Groups (circled in the following screenshot):

The second approval (Ownership Group's Manager) would be very similar except under Users's reference field, you would need to expand Ownership Group and select the Manager field (highlighted in list in blue in following screenshot). Once selected, you should see $(ownership_group.manager) listed for the Users (circled in the following screenshot):

I hope this helps!