Setting Up Auto-Approval for Project Contract Invoices

Say you want to set up auto-approval for project contract invoices. Instead of routing all invoices to the default participants for review and approval, you can configure the InvoiceApprovalHumantask workflow so that all new invoices are automatically approved and forwarded for processing.

Follow these steps:

1. In Setup and Maintenance, click the Task Panel, then search for and click the Manage Task Configurations for Project Financial Management task.

   The BPM Worklist application appears.

2. In the Tasks to be configured pane, search for the InvoiceApprovalHumantask task, and click the InvoiceApprovalHumantask link.
3. Click the Edit Task icon in the Tasks to be configured pane to open the task in edit mode.

4. Click the Assignees tab.

   The participants of the workflow are displayed. These are the users who must approve project invoices before they can be processed. Click each of these participants to review the workflow rules that apply to their approval choices.

5. Click the Contract Invoice Single Approver Participant participant in the workflow, click the Go to Rule (the diamond shaped)icon within the Approver box, and then click the Go to Rule option that appears.

   The list of rules associated with the participant you selected appears.

   Note: By default, the workflow sends project contract invoices to the contract administrator for approval. You want to remove this requirement, so the approval request won't be routed.
6. In the THEN section of the rule, select the checkbox adjacent to the Top Participant field.

   The Delete Action icon that's above the rule is enabled.

7. Click the Delete Action icon to remove the default approver for your project invoices. You must now configure the rule such that it automatically approves all new invoices.
8. Click the Insert Action icon and select Add Approver > Supervisory from the drop-down list.
9. Enter 1 in the Number of Levels field.
10. Perform the following steps to add the Starting Participant. This is the first participant, typically a manager in the approval process.

    1. Click the Search icon adjacent to the Starting Participant.

       The Add Hierarchy Participant dialog box appears.

    2. Select the Get User radio button to indicate that you want to specify a user who must approve invoices.

    3. Click the Expression Builder icon adjacent to the Reference User field.

       The Expression Builder dialog box appears.

    4. Click the Task > creator option in the expression builder and click Insert into Expression.

       The value in the Expression field now reads Task.creator.

    5. Click OK to exit the expression builder and add task.creator as the reference user for the approver. This instructs the workflow to make the creator of the task the approver.
    6. Enter "" in the Hierarchy Type field to indicate that the task creator can belong to any hierarchy type.

    7. Click OK to populate these details into the Starting Participant field.

       The value in the Starting Participant field must now read HierarchyBuilder.getPrincipal(Task.creator,-1,"","").

11. Populate the Top Participant field with the same value. The top participant is the last approver of a request.
12. Set Auto Action Enabled to True.
13. Specify the Auto Action as "APPROVE" (including the quotation marks) to instruct the application to automatically approve all project contract invoice approval requests.

14. Save and Commit your updates, enter Comments as appropriate, and click OK.

You have now configured the InvoiceApprovalHumantask workflow to automatically approve all new project contract invoice approval requests using the name of the task creator as the approver.