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 Approvals

When an approval workflow has no in-progress approvals, you can make any necessary changes to the approval workflow in Configuration > Workflow > Approval Workflows. You cannot, however, change an approval workflow's application. In that case, you must delete the approval workflow and recreate it from scratch (if the workflow has not ever been used). 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 approvals.

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

Regardless of whether or not an approval workflow currently has in-progress approvals, approval administrators and non-approval administrators can edit the following for approval workflows:

• 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 any changes to these fields.

When an Approval Workflow Has In-Progress Approvals

To edit, add, or delete approval steps in the Approval Steps grid on the Workflow tab for an approval workflow with in-progress approvals, you must be the approval administrator for the approval workflow.

If you are the approval administrator for an approval workflow with in-progress approvals, the following apply in regard to having full editing access to the Approval Steps grid on the Workflow tab:

• An Edit Workflow button displays at the top of the Workflow tab. The number of in-progress approvals is displayed beside the button.
• You click the Edit Workflow button to have 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.
• When you save the changes to the approval workflow, all in-progress approvals will be restarted from step 1.
• You should consider performing edits to approval workflows with a large number of in-progress approvals after normal business hours because restarting the in-progress approvals could take more time to process.

If you are not the approval administrator for an approval workflow, you cannot get full editing access to the Approval Steps grid on the Workflow tab. The Edit Workflow button does not display at the top of the Workflow tab. Instead, text at the top of the tab identifies the number of in-progress approvals for the approval workflow and informs you that you must be an approval administrator to have additional access to editing the workflow.