Need to send a group approval from Workflow and then automatically approve from Workflow

nupurgoswam
Giga Contributor

3 weeks ago

Hi Team, 

We need the workflow to send a Group Approval to the Assignment Group of the catalog item so that the approval is formally routed to the correct team. However, instead of skipping the approval activity entirely or auto‑approving it beforehand, the system should still generate the approval record for visibility and audit purposes, and then automatically approve it once it has been assigned to that group. In short, the approval must go to the Assignment Group, appear as a normal group approval, and then be immediately auto‑approved by the system based on the specific catalog item.
I tried using the business rules and script but did not work.
Please suggest
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lpruit2
Mega Sage

2 weeks ago

Greetings @nupurgoswam. Am I correct in saying that the current Group Approval request is being generated from the Flow that is associated with the Catalog Item request? If so, you could add to this existing Flow.

 

  • After the Target Task/Record/RITM has been routed,  you can add a new Flow Action step "Ask for Approval" and drag-and-drop the Assignment Group data pill from the Target Task/Record/RITM into the "Rules" field of this step.
    • (Optional) You can configure the Approval Rules in such a way that the Approval Group wouldn't be able to approve this task any other way (to avoid a false approval).
  • Then you can add a "Wait for Condition" Flow Action step, select the Target Task/Record/RITM and add the condition of "Assigned to is NOT empty". 
  • Next, you can add an "Update Record" Flow Action step and drag-and-drop the Target Task/Record/RITM into the Record field. 
    • Set the field Approval to Approved. This should set any generated Approval Requests to No Longer Required. 

I hope this information helps in some way or at least gets others to thinking of a better solution. I would like to add that this business process isn't one that I'm familiar with in how ServiceNow uses Approval logic. If I'm reading your business requirement correctly, it's threading together normal queue management activities with a pseudo-ghost-approval logic. I think there is value in looking at what you are hoping to achieve with this approach and if there is a better and simpler out-of-the-box solution that ServiceNow offers that can achieve the same thing. I'll list some recommendations down below.

 

  • Are you trying to track the time duration between record creation and final group assignment? Could a Service Level Agreement (SLA) solution achieve this?
  • Are you trying to reduce the number of ticket misroutes? If so, you can create new Integer "counter" fields that iterates by one any time the ticket is reassigned. You can build dashboards around this new field to better visualize those "problem records". This will help you drill-down and start to identify patterns. 
  • Are you trying to ensure assignment groups are responding to incoming tasks in a timely manner? If so, you could create Notifications and Escalation Flows to follow these Target records and automatically escalate to a higher up due to no response. 

 

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