Document approval processing is a system of routing documents through Advantage Workflow to one or more users for review/approval prior to finalizing the document. (Workflow provides the technical means of electronically routing document data to the next resource.) While it is not necessary to require approvals for documents, approval processing provides a powerful, automated means of authorizing document data prior to finalization. In this respect, approval processing is typically implemented for critical, or highly visible, documents.
A document can have up to 15 required approvals. For each approval level, you can define rules for requiring that approval level, a routing destination, a routing sequence, and whether an email notification should be sent at initial routing time.
The Document Control (DCTRL) table establishes whether approval processing is required for a particular document code. To turn approval processing "on", you must set two fields on the Document Control table accordingly:
Change the Submit Phase field to ‘Pending’. This requires all documents of the same document type and code to pass through a Pending phase prior to being finalized.
Change the Workflow Process Indicator to ‘Internal’, ‘External’, or ‘Both Internal and External’. This indicator identifies the type of Workflow engine that is invoked. ‘Internal’ points to the CGI Advantage version of workflow, whereas the ‘External’ points to a third party vendor’s version of workflow.
The Document Control (DCTRL) table determines whether documents are to be automatically submitted from pending to final after the last approval is applied. To let the document stay in pending till processed by the System Maintenance Utility check the Workflow Asynchronous Processing flag. This would disable the auto-submit feature. Once a document has completed approval processing, it will remain in Pending phase but is marked as having completed the approvals process. The default value of this flag is unchecked, which allows a document to be automatically processed to Final once the approval processing has been completed.
After the Document Control (DCTRL) table has been set up to require approvals for a specific document code, several additional workflow administration tables must be set up before documents are routed through internal Advantage workflow. The tables include:
The Manage Approval Roles (IWF01) table is where you establish and maintain workflow roles such as "Budget Approver".
The Add Roles to Approvers (IWF11) table is where you assign specific approval roles (e.g., A/P Clerk, Buyer, and System Administrator) specified on the Manage Approval Roles table.
The Manage Approval Fields (IWF06) table is where you define all specific document fields that might be used in a workflow condition.
The Manage Approval Conditions (IWF07) table establishes workflow conditions, or the various rules that might be used to determine if a particular document requires a certain level of approval. An example of a workflow condition is: the document total of the Payment Request document is greater than $2000.00. When a PRC document is processed in the system that meets this criterion, approval processing is triggered.
The Approval Rules (IWF08) table is the driving force behind Advantage workflow. On this table, the workflow administrator can set under which conditions each document code for a specific organization (for example, either entity-wide, or for a specific department) is routed for approval. Up to fifteen levels of approvals can be specified and a different assignee or assignee role can be specified for each level. For each level of approval, the administrator specifies whether there are restrictions against approving and taking task on a document that a user has created and/or submitted. These restrictions are applicable for all users, including managers and administrators. The administrator also sets whether or not the assignees receive an email notification of documents pending their approval on this table. For example, you could establish a rule that states: whenever a purchase order document is processed for Department ‘DHS’, Sally will be notified and has to approve the document before it is finalized.
The Approval Hierarchy (APRVHIER) page stores 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. For example, instead of using the default document hierarchy, an administrator can set the approval hierarchy to be by Section level first and then by Government Branch level if they desire. 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 document code.
You can view the documents that have been routed both to you and to your approval roles from the worklist page. You access the worklist page by way of the Message Center section of the secondary navigation panel in CGI Advantage. From the worklist, you have the capability to assign yourself an approval task and perform actions such as Approve, Unapprove, Reject, and Bypass Approvals. Additionally, if you are a manager of an approval role, the worklist of the role gives you access to the Manager Worklist page. The Manager Worklist facilitates the administration of workflow roles. As a role manager you can administer work items assigned to the role, regardless of whether or not the task has been taken by a user. You can also reassign items directly assigned to a user to be acted on if that user is not able to work on the work item.
Refer to the CGI Advantage System Administration Guide for details on setting up approvals for documents.