Approvals Work Area with Enhanced User Interface and Adaptive Search
Use the Approvals work area to review and take action on your approval tasks. The Approvals work area provides an enhanced user interface and adaptive search functionality where tasks can be filtered by approval type, task type, or sender, or be searched by keyword.
When enabled, the Approvals work area replaces the Worklist: Approvals and Notifications work area.
If the application is set up, you can click Navigator > Tools > Approvals to open it, instead of Navigator > Tools > Worklist to open the Worklist: Approvals and Notifications work area.
The Approvals work area has three views.
Approvals Tasks
The Approvals Tasks page shows a list of the tasks assigned to the current user, including business attributes related to the approval type. You can organize your work using supplied filters, search on keywords, and approve or reject approvals.
Supplied filters include:
- Task type, for example Approval, FYI, or Request
- Approval type, for example, expense reports
- From, or the person who sent the approval
You can also search by keywords on other attributes of the tasks. Any combination of search and filters can be bookmarked and shared.
You can quickly address your tasks without waiting for each to complete before moving to the next approval. Supported actions include:
- Approve
- Reject
- Dismiss (FYIs)
You can also comment on approval or rejection actions in a drawer if comments are set up as 'Required' in the task configuration in Business Process Management.
Quick View
Click a task in the list to open the Quick View, which displays additional information about the task and allows you to approve or reject it. You can click the arrow to navigate to the next task in the list.
To get more information or take an action that isn’t yet available in the Quick View, click View More Details to open the Analytics Publisher or Application Development Framework (ADF) notification.
Click the Approvals Tasks link to navigate back to the list.
Approvals Status and History
Click Approvals Status and History to view the current status and assignee for approvals that you’ve either submitted or been assigned as an approver.
Use the supplied filters and search by keyword to find historic approval information.
The Approvals work area is limited in functionality and isn’t a complete replacement for the Business Process Management (BPM) Worklist. For this reason, it’s available to set up at a site or user level.
The Approvals work area is designed and built with performance as a priority. The user experience is improved for both desktop and tablet or mobile users, making it easy to act quickly on approval tasks and notifications.
Steps to Enable
- Check that your environment is enabled for hybrid search. Refer to the 'Set Up the Approvals Work Area' topic in the Implementing Applications guide in Oracle Help Center for details.
- In the Scheduled Processes work area, run the Create Search Index for Worklist scheduled process once and ensure it has completed.
- In the Setup and Maintenance work area, go to the Manage Applications Core Administrator Profile Values task in the Application Extensions functional area. Set the Approval Requests UI Enabled (ORA_FND_APPROVALS) profile value depending on whether you want the Approvals work area to be available to all users or only some users.
Tips And Considerations
- The Approvals work area doesn’t replace the BPM worklist or change the behavior of the Notifications icon. You still click Show All from the notifications list in the global header, then click Worklist to open the BPM Worklist and use these tools with the application. Setting up the application doesn’t impact the BPM Worklist or Notifications icon and data remains consistent.
- The Tasks List view isn't currently configurable. It includes two attributes for each approval type, and additional attributes are shown in the Quick View.
- Users can only approve, reject or respond to request for information for the supported workflows in the Approvals work area. For all other actions, use the actions in the in-app notifications.
- As a new application, not all BPM Worklist use cases are yet supported. You can choose to set up the application at the site or user level. If you have some users who would benefit from this application, but want to keep others using the existing Worklist for all tasks, you can enable this feature for specific users by setting the profile option at the user level.
- Notifications for the following Financial workflows are available in the Approvals work area.
| Product | Workflow |
|---|---|
| Payables | Invoice Approval |
| Payables | Payment Approval |
| Expenses | Expense Report Approval |
| Expenses | Cash Advance Approval |
| Expenses | Spend Authorization Approval |
| General Ledger | Journal Approval |
| Intercompany | Intercompany Transaction Approval |
- In addition to these, notifications for the following Financials workflows are also available in the Approvals work area. However, the requisite primary actions for such workflows are not yet supported in the Approval work area and thus, users should take action on such tasks using the in-app notifications. Click on View More Details in the Quick View page to open the in-app notification.
| Product | Workflow |
|---|---|
| Payables | Invoice Account Coding Workflow |
| Payables | Holds Resolution Workflow |
| Intercompany | Intercompany Enter Receiver Distribution Workflow |
Key Resources
- Set Up the Approvals Work Area
- Use the Approvals Work Area to Manage Approvals
- Update Existing Setup Data
- Set Profile Option Values