Concept: Approval Step

An

Approval

step gives the designated approver the opportunity to approve or deny the entire business process. You can use the

Business Process Steps

tab when you edit a business process definition to configure approval settings. Use the

Group

column to control which security group (usually a role-based security group) performs the approval. Workday notifies everyone in that group that they have an approval.

You can require designated approvers to enter a comment before they can approve the step. Access the

Maintain Additional Step Configuration

task from the related actions menu of the step and select the

Require a Comment

check box. This requirement also applies to the Bulk Approve task. Note that selecting the

Disable Comments

check box on the

Edit Tenant Setup - Business Processes

task overrides the

Require a Comment

check box.

When 1 person approves all

Approval

steps, Workday displays

Automatic Approval

for the remaining steps.

Example: Step b is an

Approval

step. Step c is also an

Approval

step. Both steps are awaiting Betty to approve. When Betty approves step b, Workday displays step c as

Automatic Approval

.

When an approver selects:

Deny
, Workday terminates the business process and restores the changed data to its original state.
Send Back
for an
Approval
step, Workday displays options to send the step back to prior steps in the parent process including the
Initiation
step and
Approval
steps in business process types for which
Allow Send Back to Prior Approval
is enabled. Approvers also can send the process back to the
Initiation
step of any sibling of the current process. Example: A manager wants to send back an item to an employee during the performance appraisal process.
When a parent process is sent back to a step before the subprocess step, Workday changes the status of the subprocess to
Revised
. You can't send a business process step back to the
Parent
of the parent process or to a particular step in a sibling process.

When you send back a step, the comment you enter displays for the prior approver.

You can use routing restrictions in the business process to exclude Prior Approvers or the Event Subject. You can configure alternate routing to reroute the step to a different security group. When you configure the restrictions to skip everybody eligible to receive the step, Workday skips the step and specifies it as

Not Required

.

When you enable delegation for the sent back step, Workday sends the step back to the delegate, not to the delegator. Similarly, when you reassign a step, Workday reassigns the step to the previous assignee.

You can configure an

Approval

step so that it doesn't deliver notifications to My Tasks by accessing the

Maintain My Tasks Display

related action of the business process step.

An approver of a business process can add additional approvers to an event while the business process is in progress only when:

The business process allows ad hoc approval.
Security groups are configured for the
Ad Hoc Approve
action on the business process security policy.

Example: A manager's Manager approving a new position as part of the

Create Position

business process might decide that they need to send this particular request to the General Manager for additional approval to create this position.

On the toolbar of a My Tasks item, you can click the 3 dots and select

Add Approvers

to add additional approvers to a business process step. In the

Additional Approvers

prompt, you can select 1 or more users who you want as approvers for the event (in addition to yourself).

You can only select users that belong to security groups granted permissions to the

Ad Hoc Approve

action on the business process security policy. The contextual security groups displayed in the prompt are context-sensitive to the event target, not to the user taking action on the business process.

The

Ad Hoc Approve

action is available on review steps of a business process in which you can add or change data, as well as

Action

,

Approval

, and

Consolidated Approval

steps of a business process. The

Add Approvers

option isn't available on

Approval Chain

and

Consolidated Approval Chain

business process steps.

Added approvers can perform these actions on business process steps:

Deny
.
Delegate
.
Reassign
.
Send Back
. An added approver can send back a task to an
Action
step and to
Approval
steps in business process types for which
Allow Send Back to Prior Approval
is enabled. When an added approver sends back a task, the original approver must manually add the added approver back to the workflow as an ad hoc approver for the second iteration of the business process.

A

Consolidated Approval

means approving 1 or more selected steps at a time. Unlike the other approvals, it doesn't approve the entire business process. Configure the

Consolidated Approval

step after you add it to a business process definition. You can configure the step by selecting

Business Process

Configure Consolidated Approval

from the related actions menu of the step. To require approvers to enter a comment before approving, access the

Maintain Additional Step Configuration

task from the related actions menu of the step and select the

Require a Comment

check box. This requirement also applies to the Bulk Approve task. Note that selecting the

Disable Comments

check box on the

Edit Tenant Setup - Business Processes

task overrides the

Require a Comment

check box.

This type of step is only available for business processes that deal with multiple organizations. Examples include

Accounting Journal Intercompany Event

,

Create Project

, and

Spend Authorization

. With the

Mass Approval

step, the approver gets 1 My Tasks approval notification for all the organizations, and can select individual organizations to approve or deny.