Approvals in the Notification Center

This topic provides details about action items and notifications that can be generated by approval workflows.

Both action items and notifications can be generated to the Notification Center for items such as timesheets, expense reports, and accounts payable invoice approvals that have an approval workflow set up for them under Settings > Workflow > User Initiated Workflows. This topic does not apply to billing invoice draft approval items.

• Action Items:Action items are automatically generated for the employee who is currently assigned to an approval step. This occurs regardless of the notifications that a system administrator sets up in Approval Workflow Settings.
• Notifications: The notification alerts that the system administrator configures in Approval Workflow Settings display in the Notifications section of the Notification Center.

This means that it is not necessary to configure approval assignment notifications for the Currently Assigned approval role in Approval Workflows Settings. However, if the system administrator does configure any notifications for this role, then there will be two notifications for the employee in the Notification Center when they are assigned to the current approval step, one in the Action Item section because they are assigned to the current approval step and one in the Notification section based on the action item set up on the approval workflow.

Dismissing the item in the Notification section has no impact on the corresponding item in the Action Items section because the employee may still be required to take action on the record. To clear the action item, the employee must take the expected action on the assigned approval record or suspend it. Note that it is also possible for an employee's assignment record to be closed by another assignee if they have approval rights.