Editing Approval Workflows

After you create and save an approval workflow in Approval Workflows Configuration, you can edit it.

When an Approval Workflow Has No In-Progress Records

When an approval workflow has no in-progress records to be approved, you can make any necessary changes to the approval workflow in Settings > Workflow > Approval Workflows in the desktop application. You cannot, however, change an approval workflow's application on the General tab. To change an approval workflow's application if the workflow has never been used, you must delete the approval workflow and recreate it from scratch. Or, you can make the approval workflow inactive and recreate another one.

Approval administrators for an approval workflow (as specified on the General tab in Approval Workflows Configuration) as well as non-approval administrators can make edits to approval workflows that have no in-progress records to be approved.

When an Approval Workflow Has or Does Not Have In-Progress Records

Regardless of whether or not an approval workflow currently has in-progress records to be approved, approval administrators and non-approval administrators can edit the following for an approval workflow:

• Fields on the General tab, such as the Approval Name, Status, and Approval Administrator.
• The following fields in the Approval Steps grid on the Workflow tab:
  • Assigned To
  • Specific Employees
  • Who Must Complete
• Alerts in the Step Actions grid on the Workflow tab. You can edit the content of the alerts. You cannot add or delete an alert if there are in-progress approvals.

Approval steps are not restarted after you save changes to these fields.

When an Approval Workflow Has In-Progress Records

Only the administrator for an approval workflow (as specified on the General tab of the Approvals Configuration form) has the ability to fully edit approval steps and alerts on the Workflow tab when there are in-progress records waiting to be approved. This includes adding and removing steps and alerts.

You can tell if a workflow has in-progress records by looking at the top of the Workflow tab on the Approvals Configuration form. If in-progress records exist, the Workflow tab displays text that identifies how many approval records are in-progress. If you are the administrator for the approval workflow, an Edit Workflow button is also visible in the upper left corner of the tab. The Edit Workflow button gives a workflow administrator full access to the Approval Steps grid on the Workflow tab to make edits--including adding and deleting steps as well as editing existing steps.

Each time that you make a change to the approval workflow steps and save the change, the workflow is restarted at step 1 for all in-progress records. Alerts (if they are set up for the approval) are sent to the appropriate approvers for step 1.

To prevent the workflow from being restarted multiple times as you make and save multiple changes to the workflow in Approval Workflows Configuration, best practice is to:

1. Make a copy of the approval workflow that you want to edit.
2. Make the changes in the copy.
3. Replace the approval workflow currently in use with the copy that contains your new edits.

   For example, you specify the approval workflow to use for employee expense reports in Settings > Expense in the browser application. After you make the switch, the approval workflow is restarted once.

You should consider performing edits to approval workflows with a large number of in-progress records after normal business hours because restarting the in-progress approvals could take more time to process.

When an Approval Workflow Has Advanced Actions Added to It

Use caution when you edit approval workflows in Approval Workflows Configuration that have advanced actions added to them via User Initiated or Scheduled Workflows.

In User Initiated and Scheduled Workflows in Settings > Workflow, you can add advanced actions to approval workflows. Advanced actions are stored procedures, functions, custom methods, and web services. The advanced actions that you enter for an approval workflow do not display in Approval Workflows Configuration.

If you want to edit an approval workflow that has advanced actions added to it, you must complete additional steps to prevent the advanced actions from getting out of order and behaving in unexpected ways:

1. In User Initiated or Scheduled Workflows Configuration, for the approval workflow that you want to edit, inactivate all advanced actions (or delete them).
2. In Approval Workflows Configuration, edit, save, and restart the workflow.
3. In User Initiated or Scheduled Workflows Configuration, reactivate the advanced actions that you deactivated (or re-enter any deleted advanced action rows that you previously deleted).