Understanding Workflow in PeopleSoft Strategic Sourcing

PeopleSoft Strategic Sourcing uses the SCM Approval Workflow Engine to define approvals for events and sourcing plans. To access pages for setting up approval process workflows, select Set Up Financials/Supply Chain > Common Definitions > Approvals.

See PeopleSoft 9.1 PeopleBook: Approval Framework.

PeopleSoft Strategic Sourcing delivers predefined approval processes examples for:

  • Plan Approval: Used to approve sourcing plans.

  • Event Approval: Used to approve sourcing events.

The PeopleSoft Strategic Sourcing workflow feature enables you to create and maintain approval processes for the posting of events. PeopleSoft delivers Strategic Sourcing with a few example approval processes.

Important! The example approval processes should be overwritten to fit business requirements. Do not create new approval processes because PeopleSoft Strategic Sourcing uses the Event Approval and Plan Approval processes exclusively.

The Event Approval process requires that you turn on approval by business unit. Use the Assign Approval by Business Unit page from the Sourcing Administration homepage. If a newly posted event does not fall under a business unit with active approval, no approval process will be run for that event. The actual criteria used to determine if an event requires approval is located on the Approval Process Definition page (Set Up Financials/Supply Chain > Common Definitions > Approvals > Approval Process).

The Plan Approval process does not use this or any other business unit setup page to determine if the approval process should be run.

Note: You can configure any approval process to use the business unit as an approval criteria.

The following situations can occur when events or sourcing plans are posted:

  • Event only: When workflow approval is required for the event business unit, the initial approval status is Pending Post Approval, indicating that the transaction is pending successful matriculation through the Event Approval process.

  • Event and plan: If the criteria for the approval process is not met, the status is Posted and the designated approver will be notified.

    If the criteria is met, then the approval workflow engine routes the approval to the approvers defined in the approval process.

  • Event only: When approval is not required for the event business unit, the approval process will not run and the transaction can continue.

  • Plan only: The Plan Approval process will always run for a posted plan.

    If the criteria is not met, then the plan will be automatically approved and the approver and plan owner will be notified.

When you build a workflow approval process, specify who should be notified as an approver for each step. Identify the users according to the roles that they play in the organization and in the approval process. The process of creating an event, for example, might involve the role of a buyer, a purchasing analyst, and a manager.

When the system routes a work item to the next step in the approval process, it sends an email and worklist item to the users who fill the role that is assigned to that step.

Define users' roles when you give them their user IDs. In some cases, you might define multiple users who fill the role. In most cases, the system runs a query to find out who are the appropriate users for a specific work item.

To define roles, use the User List Definition page (Set Up Financials/Supply Chain > Common Definitions > Approvals > User List).