Overview of Managing Approvals and Notifications

A workflow task generally passes from one user (or group of users) to another, usually for approvals.

The users get notifications, for example when the task is assigned to them for approval. After all assignees act on the task, say by approving it, the task is done and whatever got approved takes effect. Some tasks are just FYI, and assignees don't need to do anything. Either way, you can configure workflow tasks, including the notifications, to meet your own company's requirements. Here are a few examples of what you can do:

• Set how many levels of approval are needed for transactions over a particular amount

• Define whom the assignees would be, based on the supervisory hierarchy in Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM

• Create approval groups so that the task can be assigned to the set of users in the group instead of an individual user

• Control when to send notifications to users involved with the task

Get Started

In the Offerings work area, enable the Approval Routing Administration feature at the offering level so that these setup tasks are available in the Application Extensions functional area:

In the Setup and Maintenance work area, use the setup tasks in the Define Approval Management for Procurement task list.

• Manage Task Configurations

• Manage Approval Groups

• Manage Requisition Approvals

• Manage Supplier Negotiation Approvals

• Mange Supplier Negotiation Award Approvals

• Manage Purchasing Document Approvals

• Manage Internal Supplier Registration Approvals

• Manage Supplier Registration Approvals

• Manage Supplier Spend Authorization Approvals

• Manage Internal Supplier Profile Change Approvals

• Manage Supplier Profile Change Approvals

• Manage External Purchase Price Approvals

• Manage Task Configuration for Procurement

Some of these setup tasks take you to BPM Worklist, where you do most of the setup and configuration related to workflow. But, depending on your offering, you might use a different functional area or even another approval setup task. Some product families have pages or tools that you can use instead of, or in addition to, BPM Worklist, depending on what you want to configure.

Note: If you want to migrate the rules from test to production, then you should use Manage Task Configuration for Procurement (BPM Worklist) to author rules, and when you author the rules, use the business key rather than the ID.

Manage Workflow Tasks

After users create a task, for example by submitting something for approval, you can use the Transaction Manager: Transactions page in the Transaction Console work area to keep track of the task. And also to jump in when you need to, especially if something goes wrong.

For workflow data, you can use the tables that start with FND_BPM in the Oracle Applications Cloud Tables and Views for Common Features guide, and the Manage Tasks API in the REST API for Common Features in Oracle Applications Cloud guide. Don't query other tables or use other APIs that aren't documented.

Components

As business processes and compliance continue to evolve, companies are placing more and more emphasis on document and spend approvals. Oracle Fusion Cloud Procurement uses Oracle SOA - Approvals Management extension (AMX) for requisition, purchasing documents and supplier management approvals. Approval rules can be set up using a user friendly interface that integrates with AMX in the backend for robust approvals management and unified control management across Oracle Fusion applications.

You can define approval rules based on your business processes and decisions, such as whether to route documents to approvers in serial or parallel, whether approvals should be based on employee supervisory hierarchy, position hierarchy, job levels, or approval groups.

There are several key components used in approvals:

• Oracle Procurement Approval Rules Management

  The approvals rules management interface allows you to set up and manage approval rules that apply to your business documents.

• Oracle SOA Approval Management extensions (AMX)

  AMX performs task routing rules for your business documents.

• Oracle Business Process Management (BPM)

  • The BPM Worklist Application is a web-based application that lets users access tasks assigned to them and perform actions based on their roles in the approval process.

  • Administrators can setup approval groups and task level configuration through an administration portal.

• Oracle Human Capital Management

  AMX integrates with the setup in Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management to derive the supervisory and position hierarchy based approvers.