Approval Workflow Failures

Whenever an approval assignment cannot be made to an employee for an approval workflow step, an approval workflow failure email is sent to the approval workflow's approval administrator.

The approval administrator is automatically assigned as the approver, and he or she can reassign the approval step to another employee.

Approval workflow steps require that an employee approves the record before the record can move to the next approval step or be completely approved. Roles and employees are assigned to approval workflow steps in the Approval Steps grid on the Workflow tab in Settings > Workflow > Approval Workflows in the desktop application. An approval administrator is assigned to an approval workflow on the General tab in Approval Workflows Configuration.

Common Approval Workflow Failures

Common approval workflow failures occur when:

• The project manager is assigned to approve a record, and either no project manager or no project is entered for the record.
• An approval assignment is made to inactive or terminated employees.

Inactive and Terminated Employee Approval Workflow Failures

Approval assignments cannot be made to employees with an inactive or terminated status. If you have multiple companies in DPS, it is possible that an employee is inactive or terminated in one company and active in another. DPS looks at an employee's status in the company that is specified as their home company in the Employees hub to determine whether or not the employee is active. An employee's status in their home company applies for approvals, regardless of the company in which an approval is being processed.

Approval Workflow Failure Emails

When no employee can be assigned to an approval workflow step, the approval administrator receives an approval workflow failure email that:

• Identifies the approval step that failed, the reason for the failure, and the role or employee who is responsible for completing the step.
• Contains a Open Record hyperlink that opens the entry form for the record. On the entry form, you can click the Approval > Reassign option on the toolbar to reassign the approval step to an employee. After the approval administrator re-assigns the step to an employee, then the approval step can be approved.

DPS uses the approval administrator's email address that is entered in the Employees hub.

Correcting an Approval Workflow Failure

The approval administrator who is assigned to an approval workflow can open the record that has an approval workflow failure and use the Approvals > Reassign option on the entry form toolbar to assign the step to an employee. A hyperlink to the record is provided in the approval workflow failure email.

Example of an Approval Workflow Failure:

1. Approval step 1 for an approval workflow for purchase orders is assigned to the project manager role of the cost distribution project for purchase orders.

   Project Manager is entered in the Assigned To field in the Approval Steps grid of the Workflow tab in Approval Workflows Configuration.

2. A purchase order is entered for cost distribution project A, but no project manager is specified for project A in the Projects hub.
3. When the purchase order is submitted, the purchase order is now in step 1 of the approval process. No employee can be assigned to the step because there is no project manager entered for the cost distribution project.
4. An approval workflow failure email is sent to the approval administrator of the approval workflow. The approval administrator is specified on the General tab in Approval Workflows Configuration. DPS uses the approval administrator's email address that is entered in the Employees hub.

This scenario can also occur if no cost distribution project is entered for the purchase order on the Default Distribution tab of the Purchase Orders entry form.