Approval Hierarchy

The Approval Hierarchy (APRVHIER) page is a specialized page that records the desired hierarchical precedence of organization codes that the approval engine uses in between the first lookup with all the supplied organization codes to the last lookup of all wildcard values. While there can be as few or as many levels as necessary, it is possible that performance can degrade if many lookups are required. The hierarchical precedence is not specific to any particular Transaction Code. The default, delivered hierarchical precedence will be the following:

Field	Description
Sequence	A required sequence number for each combination of organizational COA in approval hierarchy rules.
Organizational COA Check Boxes (9)	Each organizational COA is represented by a checkbox that indicates whether or not the COA is used in the hierarchy.

Two scenarios are necessary to explain this reference page. The first is without using the page. The second is using the delivered data.

Field	Value
Transaction Code	PO
Transaction Department	010
Transaction Unit	(blank)
Approval Rules	Two entries for Purchase Order: Organization Codes: Department 010 and Unit 001 with all other fields the wildcard of ???? for a simple condition that routes all purchase orders with those COA in the Transaction ID to an Approval Role of 010_001. Organization Codes: All wildcards equal to ???? with a condition that routes all purchase orders to an approval role of Central Purchasing.

When the transaction is successfully submitted out of draft, the approval engine will perform a lookup to the Approval Rules using the Transaction Code and Transaction Department. Since there is no Transaction Unit entered, a look up will not be performed with the unit and all of the organization codes except department will be wildcards. If there had been a Transaction Unit, then a lookup to the Unit reference page would have been done to retrieve all organizational rollups for possible use in evaluating workflow rules.

As a result, only Approval Rule #2 will be read and the Purchase Order will go to the Central Purchasing approval role. (Note, if rule #1 should have been read, then the requirement for a Transaction Unit should be set on the Transaction Control page.

Field	Value
Transaction Code	PO
Transaction Department	010
Transaction Unit	001
Unit	Current Fiscal Year, Department 010; Unit 001 Org Codes: Government Branch = 010 Cabinet = 010
Approval Rules	One entry for Purchase Order: Organization Codes: Cabinet 010 and all other COA fields equal to the ???? wildcard for a simple condition that routes all purchase orders with that COA to an Approval Role of CAB010.

When the transaction is successfully submitted out of draft, the approval engine will perform a lookup to Unit to determine the organization codes for the department and unit. Then the department and unit combination is used to retrieve the government branch and cabinet.

The approval engine will next perform a lookup to Approval Rules with those four organization codes. Unable to find an entry on Approval Rules, the approval engine will perform a lookup to Approval Hierarchy, which will provide the hierarchy to be used to perform the subsequent lookups to Approval Rules. Using the lowest sequence from Approval Hierarchy, a lookup will be performed to the Approval Rules (IWF08) table, which will also not find an entry on IWF08.

The approval engine will then continue using the next sequence(s) from the Approval Hierarchy (Government Branch, Cabinet, Department, Division, Group, Section, District, and Bureau); no Approval Rule is found so the next sequence is used and so forth. Finally, upon reading sequence #6 (Government Branch, Cabinet and Department), a match is found. Keep in mind that reading the Approval Hierarchy only has to match the non-blank COA retrieved from the Unit record. The single approval rule will be found and the transaction will go to pending.