20.1 Setting Up an Approval Process for a Page

An approval process is a series of one or more approval routing steps. Each routing step includes one or more users, or groups (approvers), or both, who must approve an item before it is published. Routing to the approvers can be in serial (one at a time) or in parallel (all at once). Each step can be defined to require a response by any one approver or by all approvers.

You can specify that users can add draft versions of an item without immediate approval. Draft items are only visible to the item owner, who can submit the item for approval, once it is finalized. See Section 2.7.1.1.3, "Submitting a Draft Item for Approval."

You can also extend the approval process to all users contributing content to the page, instead of just those with the Manage Items With Approval privilege.

For users to receive notice of an approval, they must place a Notifications portlet or My Worklist portlet on one of their pages. For more information, see Section 2.7.2, "Approving or Rejecting Content."

20.1.1 Setting Up an Oracle Portal Approval Process for a Page

To set up an Oracle Portal approval process for a page:

  1. Go to the page where you will define an approval process.

    For information on locating a page, see Section 8.1, "Locating Pages in Oracle Portal."

  2. Switch to Edit mode.

  3. Click the Properties link next to Page in the page toolbar.

    Be sure to click the link for the page rather than the page group.

  4. Click the Approval tab to bring it forward.

  5. Select Define a New Approval Process for the Page.

    The Approval Routing List section now appears.

    Note:

    If you select this option and then do not define an approval process for the page, users with the Manage Items With Approval privilege will be able to add items to the page without requiring approval.

    If you do not select this option, the page uses the approval process defined for the page group.

  6. In the Approvers field in the Approval Routing List section, select one or more approvers (users or groups) for the first step of the approval routing list.

    Click the Users or Groups icon to add a user or a group. If you type in user and group names manually, check spellings carefully to avoid invalid entries.

    Note:

    Each step of the approval routing list can include both users and groups. Use a semicolon (;) as the separator between multiple users and groups.

    Do not use the same approver in more than one step. Any additional times the approver is listed, he or she will be skipped.

    Oracle Portal provides the following special approvers:

    • #PAGE_GROUP_MANAGER#: Any user or group with the Manage All privilege on the page group, or the Manage All global level privilege on all page groups.

    • #PAGE_MANAGER#: Any user or group with the Manage privilege on the page.

    • #CONTENT_MANAGER#: Any user or group with the Manage Content privilege, or the higher-level Manage privilege, on the page.

    Oracle Portal uses the Oracle Internet Directory for identity management, serving as the repository for users and groups. In the Oracle Internet Directory, groups are uniquely identified by their distinguished name (DN). Each group has a unique DN, though many groups can share a common name, in the same way that two people can share a common name, yet have completely different lineage (for example, John Smith and John Doe). When working within the portal, groups created from within that portal are displayed simply with their common names. However, when the portal references a group from some other location in the Oracle Internet Directory—such as a group from some other portal associated with the same Identity Management Infrastructure—the DN of the group is displayed to distinguish it from the portal's locally defined groups.

  7. In the Routing Method for Approvers list, choose a routing method for the approval routing list:

    • One at a time, all must approve (Serial, All)—This sends the approval to approvers in the step one at time in the sequence specified. All of the approvers must respond to the approval.

    • All at the same time, all must approve (Parallel, All)—This sends the approval to approvers in the step all at the same time. All of the approvers must respond to the approval.

    • All at the same time, only one must approve (Parallel, Any)—This sends the approval to approvers in the step all at the same time. Only one of the approvers must respond to the approval.

  8. Click Add Step to continue adding steps to the approval routing list.

    For each step, select approvers and a routing method. Each step you add is listed in the Current Approval Process section. You can edit existing steps by clicking the list of users and groups, or the Edit icon. When you edit a step, the step details are displayed in the routing method section and the Add Step button changes to Update Step.

  9. Select Enable Item Drafts to enable users with the Manage Items With Approval privilege to add draft versions of items to this page, without having to submit them for approval.

    Draft items are visible only to the item owner in the Pending Items Preview and List editing views. Once the draft is finalized, the user can submit the item for approval from the Actions page. Once enabled, this option cannot be disabled until all draft items in this page are submitted for approval.

    If you do not want to allow content contributors to upload draft items without approval, do not select this option.

    Note:

    Regardless of whether Retain Deleted Items is enabled for the page group, when you delete an item with the status Draft, it is irrevocably deleted from the portal. The only way to restore the item is to add it to the page once again.
  10. Select All Users Require Approval if every content contributor requires approval.

    By default, this option is not selected which means that only users with the Manage Items With Approval privilege require approval.

  11. Click OK when the approval routing list is complete.

    An approval routing list is now defined for the page.

If there is an active approval process pending for an item, the approval routing steps for the item cannot be reordered. If the approval routing list is changed at the page group or page level, it does not affect the process pending for the item. However, the administrator can still delete routing steps and edit the recipients in individual steps of the pending process (but cannot reorder the steps).

At any point, a page group administrator or content manager can approve or reject a pending item. On approval by the portal administrator, the process skips the current approver and moves onto the next approver. On rejection, the approval process ends. This is a useful way of bypassing a user in an approval process who is unavailable.

20.1.2 Specifying an Oracle BPEL Approval Process for a Page

Note:

Before you can specify an Oracle BPEL approval for a page the process must first be defined and deployed using Oracle BPEL Designer and then the portal administrator must create a process definition for that process. For information about how to do this, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Portal.

To specify an Oracle BPEL approval process for a page:

  1. Go to the page where you will specify an approval process.

    For information on locating a page, see Section 8.1, "Locating Pages in Oracle Portal."

  2. Switch to Edit mode.

  3. Click the Properties link next to Page in the page toolbar.

    Be sure to click the link for the page rather than the page group.

  4. Click the Approval tab to bring it forward.

  5. Select Define a New Approval Process for the Page.

  6. From the BPEL Process User list, choose the portal user to associate with the BPEL process. This user must have Manage All privileges on the page group and will typically be the page group administrator. The user does not have to be a user that is part of the Oracle BPEL approval process.

  7. From the Process Name list, choose the Oracle BPEL process definition that you want to use for this page. Use the description, if one exists, to help you decide if this is the one that you want to use.

    The process definitions must have already been created by the portal administrator For information about how to do this, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Portal.

  8. From the Access Users list, select the users that you want to add as approvers for the BPEL workflow process and click the right arrow to move them to the Workflow Approvers list.

    Any user with Manage or Manage Content privileges on the page can be selected as an approver.

    The users included in the Workflow Approvers list are passed to the BPEL process in the order they appear here.

  9. Select Enable Item Drafts to enable users with the Manage Items With Approval privilege to add draft versions of items to this page, without having to submit them for approval.

    Draft items are visible only to the item owner in the Pending Items Preview and List editing views. Once the draft is finalized, the user can submit the item for approval from the Actions page. Once enabled, this option cannot be disabled until all draft items in this page are submitted for approval.

    If you do not want to allow content contributors to upload draft items without approval, do not select this option.

    Note:

    Regardless of whether Retain Deleted Items is enabled for the page group, when you delete an item with the status Draft, it is irrevocably deleted from the portal. The only way to restore the item is to add it to the page once again.
  10. Select All Users Require Approval if every content contributor requires approval.

    By default, this option is not selected which means that only users with the Manage Items With Approval privilege require approval.

  11. Click OK.