Dynamic amounts of Approvers

Is it possible to have a Job creator specify the amount of Approvers for an instance of a workflow. i.e. There is a worflow named GetContentLive. They run it on monday and decide they only need 1 approver. They run it again on Tuesday but decide that this time the work needs 6 approvers.
Is that possible to create?

Hazzie

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Migrateduser

If you look at the work_order.wft workflow template that ships with TeamSite in the .../local/config/wft/default path, you will see one way to do this. You will need to know how many the most number of approvers you would need. Follow the code that produces the TAG_info code for entered contributors and that should give you what you need - just substitute approvers for contributors. It will make the first one required and the rest optional, so you can enter as few as 1 or as many as the number you set for how many appear on the UI. If this seems reasonable and you need more detail, email me - I wrote the original work_order.wft for Interwoven.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

First, we need to be clear on what you mean by 6 approvers. Do you mean that (a) any one of these 6 people can grant the needed approval, (b) that all 6 of these people need to grant their approval, or (c) that if the first person gives approval then the job goes on to the second person, etc.?

If your answer is (a), you can use a group task and have it shared by all of the approvers. Any one of the approvers can then take ownership of the task and select a transition.

If your answer is (b) or (c) [concurrent or serial approval], then, "Yes", it is possible, but it is not easy to do with the current releases of TeamSite. You can put a loop in the WFT to produce the desired tasks. Most of the complexity comes in linking up the tasks correctly.

You also need to decide how the n people will be determined (you could have a multi-select in the job creation page), and whether or not you want to allow or disallow zero approvers.

You may get some ideas by looking at iw-home/local/config/wft/examples/serial_approval.wft

Brinko Kobrin
Interwoven Staff Engineer

Migrateduser

Brinko,

I'm task with a simiular workflow. I need a work flow that will send an email to 8 concurrent approvers, then once all approve it's send to a queue for pub. If declined by one, then the author is notified and process starts over when author makes neccesary changes and re-submits work.

Can this be done easily with the "Workflowbuilder" app? Are the any good examples of what I've descibed?

Thanks for any help!

Adam Stoller

Unfortunately - no - this cannot be done easily with WorkflowBuilder at this time.

Fortunately, there is code you can take advantage of in iw-home/local/config/wft/examples/concurrent_approval*.wft

--fish
(Interwoven Information Guy)

Hazzie

Cheers for the info. Will investigate the examples you have mentioned.

Hazzie