Configuring the Approval Workflow Engine for Use with Supplier Contract Management

This chapter provides an overview of Supplier Contract Management workflow and discusses how to:

• Establish processes for the approval workflow engine.

• Maintain user list definitions.

• Define the approval transaction registry.

• Define generic templates.

• Set up event escalations and notifications.

• Define self-approval criteria.

See Also

Using Workflow and Managing Approvals

Understanding Supplier Contract Management Workflow

This section discusses:

• Workflow in Supplier Contract Management.

• Processes for the approval workflow engine.

• Users of the approval workflow engine.

• Setup steps for the approval workflow engine.

• Approval setup and transaction tables.

Workflow in Supplier Contract Management

Workflow is the process of routing clauses or documents for approval or collaboration. During the process, a set of approvers and reviewers carry out tasks that are related to a document or clause.

The PeopleSoft Supplier Contract Management application uses two workflow types and user preferences for processing different approval and review phases of a document and its components. The use of workflow is controlled using installation options. One type of workflow is the standard workflow feature that is common to many PeopleSoft applications. The system uses this standard workflow feature for collaboration. Collaboration provides basic simultaneous workflow notifications when collaboration is initiated by an administrator, as well as notifications back to the administrator when collaboration is complete. Collaboration workflow is best used when you route the document to various individuals during contract document development.

See Enterprise PeopleTools 8.48 PeopleBook: Workflow Technology.

The second type of workflow is the application workflow engine (AWE). The engine requires the setup of an approval workflow process. The approval workflow process is the framework that enables three levels of users, from technical to end users, to develop and configure approvals that meet their organizational requirements. You can use the AWE to approve new clauses in the library, and for final approval routing of the contract document. Normally, this is a rubber-stamp type approval, because the collaboration feature is better used to develop the contract. For example, the process of creating a new clause in the library and approving it requires defining who should approve the clause, the order in which that person approves it, and how it is routed to approvers. When the approval process is complete, the clause is available for use in a document.

The AWE also provides a way to dynamically define authorized approvers for an approval workflow process of the contract document. A sample approval process definition called Document is provided as an example of how you can set up the document approval to do a final content clause approval, business approval for commodity and fiscal review, and a final owner approval. The example approval is set up for transactional purchase order contract-related documents; however, the AWE setup enables you to configure the approval for document approval definition by specifying record and field criteria to evaluate.

Collaboration is a contract process that you use with standard PeopleSoft workflow. During collaboration, you review and negotiate the terms of a clause, contract, or ad hoc document. You use the standard PeopleSoft workflow to finalize the document. After collaboration, you can use the AWE process to gain approval for the contract or ad hoc document.

This table provides an overview of how workflow is used in Supplier Contract Management, along with how various elements are approved:

Processes for the Approval Workflow Engine

The approval workflow process is a framework that enables users to develop and configure document approvals. Using the AWE, the system takes documents that include clauses, sections, and templates through the approval process until the document is approved or stopped. The clause is the basic foundation for creating documents. During the approval process, you use Microsoft Word to review a clause or document and then use approval workflow pages to approve or deny the clause.

You can create clauses and include them in sections and document configurators. You can view the clauses, but during document generation, the system only includes the approved clauses in the document. You cannot use clauses that have not been approved as dependent or alternate clauses or use unapproved clause in rules.

Using approval workflow, you can:

• Approve or deny documents.

• Approve or deny document clauses.

• Include multiple approvers and reviewers.

• Access and review the Microsoft Word document.

• Assign additional approvers and reviewers during the approval process.

• Use worklist and email notifications.

• Enter comments about the document.

Users of the Approval Workflow Engine

The workflow process that is used by the AWE is designed for users with different responsibilities in an organization. Participants include:

• Application administrators who normally:

  • Configure the supplier contract installation.

  • Configure approval types and clause classes.

• Contract administrators, document librarians, and managers who normally:

  • Set up user preferences for contract approvals.

  • Submit clauses for approval.

  • Add and remove approvers and reviewers.

  • Submit contracts for approval.

• Approvers who normally:

  • Approve or deny clauses.

  • Add comments and ad hoc approvers.

  • Approve or deny clauses, contracts, or other documents.

Setup Steps for the Approval Workflow Engine

Before you can send documents for review:

1. Define approvers for use with clause and document approvals.

   To define approvers:

   • Define roles and permission lists.

     Permission lists provide security authorizations for users. Roles are intermediate objects that exist between permission lists and user profiles.

     See Supplier Contract Sample Permission Lists, Roles, and Users.

   • Assign users to roles.

     After users have assigned user IDs, you can assign the user IDs to the Supplier Contract Management roles for approvals.

   • Create approval types, assign approving roles to them, and define clause update authorities.

     The system uses the approving role name to determine the group of users that it uses in the approval cycle for a clause or document. To access the page, select Supplier Contracts, Supplier Contracts Setup, Approval Types.

     The system provides the CLASS01 clause class and the HIGHRISK, MEDRISK, and LOWRISK sample clause approval types. These approval types represent levels of risk to the organization and place an importance on the approval of the clause or document. You can use this sample data as a starting point for developing approval types and clause classes.

   • Set installation options for supplier contracts to require approvals for clauses and documents.

     To access the options, select Supplier Contracts, Supplier Contracts Setup, Installation Options. If clauses and documents do not require approvals, the system doesn't launch an approval process when you create the clause or document.

2. Define user preferences that control authorizations for document administrators. These are users who can create and submit documents.

   To access the authorizations, select Supplier Contracts, Supplier Contracts Setup, User Preferences.

3. Define user lists for use with steps in the contract approval process.

   User lists define how the system determines sources for routing clause and document approvals. Options include roles, structured query language definitions, queries, and application classes.

4. Define how the system notifies approvers during the approval process.

   You use the Generic Template Definition page to setup notifications for each type of notification the system needs to send to administrators and approvers.

5. Set up the approval transaction registry.

   The approval transaction registry is the interface application developers use to register an application with the approval workflow engine.

6. Set up the approval process definitions.

   The approval process definition determines the routing of the clause or document approval. The two definitions required are Document for document approval and Clause for clause approvals. The flow includes setting up approval workflow for:

   • Stages.

     This is a part of an approval transaction that can contain multiple paths but must be at the same record level.

   • Paths.

     A path is a sequence of steps. Within a stage, paths execute in parallel, with each path inheriting its header or line-level from the stage.

   • Steps.

     A step represents one or more approvers or reviewers. The system processes steps in a path in sequence as separate criteria for each step determines whether or not that step is processed.

   • Criteria.

     You can define field criteria along with monetary and application class criteria using most records and fields in the database. The system uses this criteria for paths and steps and for self approvals.

7. Authorize approvers.

   This step defines approvers and their approval authorization criteria for use in an approval process.

8. Set up events and escalations.

   Create a notification event and specify the conditions for which the event should check and the actions that the system should take when the notification conditions are met. You can also define rules for sending notifications, such as when a clause or document approval has gone beyond the time defined for responses.

9. Manage the approval through its life cycle.

   After you set up approval workflow and generate clauses or documents, the system uses the setup information to process documents. This is when approvers and reviewers perform approval tasks that apply the setup features you defined.

   See Approving Documents and Document Components.

Approval Setup and Transaction Tables

Basic tables to set up Supplier Contract Management include:

These are some of the basic tables the system uses during the processing of approvals and collaboration. You can reference additional tables when setting up approval process definitions to define criteria for AWE workflow:

Establishing Processes for the Approval Workflow Engine

This section discusses how to:

• Define details for approval processes.

• Define alert criteria for approval workflows.

• Set up approval workflow paths.

• Define steps for document approval workflows.

Pages Used to Establish Processes for the Approval Workflow Engine

Defining Details for Approval Processes

Access the Approval Process Definition page.

Use this page to define an approval definition process. The process is made up of stages and their paths and steps. The approval steps that you place on the approval path represent the approval levels that are required for an AWE transaction.

Each PeopleSoft application has a top-level record (known as a header) with keys that uniquely identify a single transaction in an application. The application itself typically has other records, but they are children (line-level records) of the header record.

Note. Approvals are processed only at the header level for Supplier Contract Management. This means that there is not a line-level approval capability.

See Also

Setting Up Approval Workflow Process Definitions

Defining Alert Criteria for Approval Workflows

Access the Criteria Definition page.

Use this page to define the different types of criteria that you want to apply to a workflow approval process. You can create definitions consisting of a field with a logical operator and a value or definitions consisting of an application class that takes in transaction data to process the approval.

Criteria is an entity that evaluates to true or false. Criteria programs the approval workflow engine, using transaction-specific information to change, for example, routing paths. To set the context for the criteria, the engine provides the transaction keys as bind values.

See Also

Defining Criteria for Approval Workflow Processes

Setting Up Approval Workflow Paths

Access the Approval Path Definition page.

Use this page to set up additional parameters that determine how the system processes an approval path. A path contains a sequence of steps. Within a stage, paths are processed in parallel. Path entry criteria determines whether a path is processed for a given transaction or transaction line. Depending on the implementation of Supplier Contract Management, you might, for example, want to create criteria that supports various source transactions and document types. These need to be configured in the document approval definition.

Use the escalations feature to define time elements for when an approver takes too long to approve or deny a pending request.

See Also

Defining Paths for Approval Workflow Processes

Defining Steps for Document Approval Workflows

Access the Approval Step Definition page.

Use this page to define steps for the approval workflow. A step represents one or more approvers or reviewers. Steps within a path are processed in sequence. Separate criteria for each step determines whether that step is performed. Each step can also have a set of reviewers, who are notified about transactions pending approval by email, if configured, and through the worklist. But the workflow proceeds without waiting for reviewers to act.

See Also

Setting Up Approval Workflow Process Definitions

Maintaining User List Definitions

This section discusses how to define user lists.

Page Used to Maintain User List Definitions

Defining User Lists

Access the User List Definition page.

Use this page to define user sources for use with steps in the contract approval process. Supplier contracts use a user list as a means to map users to certain functional roles; thereby reducing source search time. PeopleSoft delivers a set of default user list roles corresponding to the roles within an organization. These roles are intended primarily for use with routing controls.

See Also

Defining Users for Approval Workflow

Defining the Approval Transaction Registry

This section discusses how to register the approval transaction.

Page Used to Define the Approval Transaction Registry

Registering the Approval Transaction

Access the Approval Transaction Registry page.

Use this page to register a PeopleSoft application, such as Supplier Contract Management, with the approval workflow engine. Using the page, you can define how the system interacts with portions of the application that you have defined for approvals. The registry links the components, event handler, records, and classes that you created in the approval process for an application transaction such as a clause or document approval.

See Also

Defining the Approval Transaction Registry

Defining Generic Templates

This section discusses how to enter generic template definitions.

Pages Used to Define Generic Templates

Entering Generic Template Definitions

Access the Generic Template Definition page.

You use generic templates to establish common formats for ad hoc notifications.

See Also

Entering Generic Template Definitions

Setting Up Event Escalations and Notifications

This section provides an overview of event escalations and notifications and lists the pages that are used to set up event escalations and notifications.

Understanding Event Escalations and Notifications

The approval workflow engine waits for an approver’s decision before attempting to route the transaction further. However, using escalations and notifications, you can control what the approval engine does if the approver waits too long before responding. Approvers have a predefined amount of time to respond, after which the AWE can either remind the approver, notify someone else, or proceed with the next approval, assuming the document was approved.

Event notifications can be configured as an organization requires them. The notifications are available to meet specific needs and normally do not require coding, and they enable the system to send emails to appropriate users when specific, predefined approval events take place, such as an approver approving or denying a document.

Pages Used to Set Up Event Escalations and Notifications

See Also

Enterprise PeopleTools 8.48 PeopleBook: PeopleSoft Process Scheduler

Setting Up an Escalation Event

Defining Self-Approval Criteria

This section discusses how to set up self-approval criteria.

Page Used to Define Self-Approval Criteria

Setting Up Self-Approval Criteria

Access the Criteria Definition page.

Use this page to define approval limitations for contract managers or owners when they can approve the documents they create. For example, if a contract manager submits a contract that is linked to a monetary amount, you can use this page to define the greatest amount the manager and self approve before additional approvals are required.

The User Auto Approval check box setting on the Approval Process page enables self-approval. If self-approval is enabled, the system assumes the contract manager or owner's approval can approve a clause or document. If you establish criteria that controls the manager's approval authority, and that criteria is exceeded, the system does not include the manager as an approver.

If the manager is an approver on a step in any path in the process, then all prior steps in that path are omitted. Also, if self-approvals are enabled, and the self-approval criteria is met, then the system omits that step.

See Also

Defining Alert Criteria for Approval Workflows