Dynamic Serial approval

Hazzie

I have posted before asking for information on Dynamic approval, and thanks to the people who replied as your ideas helped me solve my problem. This is similar and would seem a much more simple task to do, however the implementation of it is causing me problems.

I already have in place code that allows me to select 1-n amount of approvers via a multi select box. This allows me to build up a concurrent approval workflow. The business users are now asking for the same ability i.e. they can pick any number of people but this time they want it in a serial workflow. i.e. one approver does his/her job and then it moves on to the next and so on till the end of the approvers.

Now at first glance it would seem as if I have most of the code in place for this already however, I do not think a multi select box is appropriate for this type of job. I would much prefer an ordinary drop down select box.

Is there a way of creating a 'replicant' type approach to this. i.e. the workflow input form is displayed allowing an author to be selected. Then a drop down select box is available to the user to select an Approver. Once they have selected a user, the form is reloaded and another approver box appears to allow the next approver (if needed) to chosen.



Hazzie
TS 5.5.2 on NT.

Bowker

This is a good one.

I can think of three different ways to do this neither is pretty.

1) (this is what we did) build different workflows, one for each different number of approvers you may want. (one approver, two approvers, ...) and duplicate what you already have. When the user tries to initiate the job, he/she would have to pick how many serial approval steps there are. Unless you are dealing with 1 to LOTS different approver this is the easiest of the three choices I'm presenting here.

2) Build the workflow from an application that would build the workflow XML file. The external application would create the XML file with the proper tasks already built in. Once the XML is built it should be started with iwjobc and iwinvokejob. An example of the XML you want to start with can be viewed by running your current workflow with debug on.

3) Build a workflow with the maximum number of approval steps possible. Between each step put an external task that would either continue to the next approver, or skip over the approvers (probably to a submit near the end). The external task would have two successors and you could check a job variable to see if there are more approvers left. The external task would then do a callback X where X depends upon the next step desired. Remember all the 'skipped' tasks must be owned by someone even if they won't be used.

There may be other solutions, but I don't know of a 'simple' way to do this.
SMITTY?