Manager approvals when a manager doesn't exist

[Dan Hinrichs]

Hi everyone,

We have a few catalog items in our Service Catalog that require an approval from a manager before the workflow can proceed.   On many of these items, we use the user table to look up the requestor's manager (we sync with Active Directory to get user data in) so the approval can automatically go to that manager.   Normally this works just fine, but we run into problems when a requestor doesn't have a manager listed.   In that case, the approval task gets "sent" to UNKNOWN (the value of the manager field in the requestor's user profile) and therefore can't be approved.   Furthermore, it doesn't look like the approval task can be reassigned to someone else once it's created.

Does anyone know of a quick way to redirect these approvals from UNKNOWN to an actual person?   Thanks!

[sryan]

Dan,

Here is a variety of options offered by techs at Fruition Partners:

• If the user has no manager but the item requires manager approval, create a sub workflow to send an email to the user/requester to update their profile in the source of record (the system that updates ServiceNow user records). Set the workflow to wait and periodically check for updated records. If the approver does not get updated after a specific time period (days/week), cancel the request.
• After performing the check for a manager (and finding none), assign a task to the service desk to research the manager that should approve the request. Add a special field in ServiceNow where the service desk can populate the correct manager. Then use that information to create the approval record and continue with the workflow.
• If no manager is found, automatically send the approval to a specified approval group, such as Information Security.
• Since this represents a data issue with Active Directory (or similar source), when the manager is not found, branch the workflow to first create a task for a group to "correct" Active Directory. Use that information to route the approval appropriately.
• Have someone manually peruse the approvals that are in a black hole due to missing approver. Manually update the approver information. The approval_admin role will allow updating the approval record

[Chandan23]

Dan,

If you need a permanent solution for this then you need to built a process and then implementation.

Secondly, if you want on a temporary besis, go straight and change the approver of required record.

[Harish Murikina]

Hi Dan,

                    May i know how your adding manager approval. Are you adding in Business rule?

If yes. Just check if condition. Manager exist or not.

If not exist skip the approval and start workflow from Business rule.

Regards,

Harish.

[bhanu2491]

Hi Dan,

I faced this issue myself, So what i did was to grant access to approve or reject the approvals to service Desk and made the comments mandatory so that event if they are approving they have to put a reason which helps in tracking the approvals.

Thanks,

Bhanu

[Jace Benson]

What did you end up doing?

Personally, I'd put a run script/script include and had it return the user or some property where the property had a user's sys_id.

dhinrichs