Using Workflow in PeopleSoft Enterprise Strategic Sourcing

This chapter provides an overview of workflow and discusses how to:

Define approval processes.
Assign approval processes for sourcing events.

Understanding Workflow in PeopleSoft Enterprise Strategic Sourcing

PeopleSoft Enterprise Strategic Sourcing uses the SCM Approval Workflow Engine to define approvals for events and sourcing plans. To access pages for setting up approval process workflows, select Set Up Financials/Supply Chain, Common Definitions, Approvals.

See Using Workflow and Managing Approvals.

PeopleSoft Enterprise Strategic Sourcing delivers predefined approval processes examples for:

Plan Approval: Used to approve sourcing plans.
Event Approval: Used to approve sourcing events.

The PeopleSoft Enterprise Strategic Sourcing workflow feature enables you to create and maintain approval processes for the posting of events. PeopleSoft delivers Strategic Sourcing with a few example approval processes.

Important! The example approval processes should be overwritten to fit business requirements. Do not create new approval processes because PeopleSoft Enterprise Strategic Sourcing uses the Event Approval and Plan Approval processes exclusively.

The Event Approval process requires that you turn on approval by business unit. Use the Assign Approval by Business Unit page from the Sourcing Administration homepage. If a newly posted event does not fall under a business unit with active approval, no approval process will be run for that event. The actual criteria used to determine if an event requires approval is located on the Approval Process Definition page (Set Up Financials/Supply Chain, Common Definitions, Approvals, Approval Process).

The Plan Approval process does not use this or any other business unit setup page to determine if the approval process should be run.

Note. You can configure any approval process to use the business unit as an approval criteria.

The following situations can occur when events or sourcing plans are posted:

Event only: When workflow approval is required for the event business unit, the initial approval status is Pending Post Approval, indicating that the transaction is pending successful matriculation through the Event Approval process.
Event and plan: If the criteria for the approval process is not met, the status is Posted and the designated approver will be notified. If the criteria is met, then the approval workflow engine routes the approval to the approvers defined in the approval process.
Event only: When approval is not required for the event business unit, the approval process will not run and the transaction can continue.
Plan only: The Plan Approval process will always run for a posted plan. If the criteria is not met, then the plan will be automatically approved and the approver and plan owner will be notified.

Roles and Users in PeopleSoft Enterprise Strategic Sourcing

When you build a workflow approval process, specify who should be notified as an approver for each step. Identify the users according to the roles that they play in the organization and in the approval process. The process of creating an event, for example, might involve the role of a buyer, a purchasing analyst, and a manager.

When the system routes a work item to the next step in the approval process, it sends an email and worklist item to the users who fill the role that is assigned to that step.

Define users' roles when you give them their user IDs. In some cases, you might define multiple users who fill the role. In most cases, the system runs a query to find out who are the appropriate users for a specific work item.

To define roles, use the User List Definition page (Set Up Financials/Supply Chain, Common Definitions, Approvals, User List).

Defining Approval Processes

This section discusses how to:

Register an approval process.
Define configuration options.

See Using Workflow and Managing Approvals.

Pages Used to Define Workflow Processes

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
Approval Process Definition	SAC_AW_PRCS_MAIN	Set Up Financials/Supply Chain, Common Definitions, Approvals, Approval Process	Define an approval process to be used with workflow. See Using Workflow and Managing Approvals.
Approval Transaction Registry	SAC_AW_TXN	Set Up Financials/Supply Chain, Common Definitions, Approvals, Approval Transaction History	Define a workflow approval process.
Configuration Options	SAC_AW_TXN_NOTIFY	Set Up Financials/Supply Chain, Common Definitions, Approvals, Approval Transaction History, Configuration Options	Add configuration options to the workflow process.

Registering an Approval Process

Access the Approval Transaction Registry page.

This page is the central record for all approvals for a specific workflow process.

Important! Only the Enable Notifications and Notification Strategy options should be changed on this page. Other changes will require significant technical modifications to the application code.

Approval Process ID and Description	Enter the name and description for the workflow approval process. The description is a required field.
Object Owner ID	Select Strategic Sourcing.

Defining Configuration Options

Access the Configuration Options page.

Important! The only options that should be changed on this page are the Ad Hoc Approver Options. If necessary, you can change the (email template) Template Name directly in the system on the Generic Template Definition page (PeopleTools, Workflow, Notifications, Generic Templates). Bind variables for this template can be controlled by defining a SQL Object for the SQL Object Identifier setting.

Supply Chain Management Approval Workflow documentation should be reviewed before changing any of these settings.

See Using Workflow and Managing Approvals.

Template Name

(Optional) Select a specific email template to use with this workflow.

Assigning Approval Processes for Sourcing Events

To assign an approval process by business unit, use the Assign Approval by Business Unit component. If approval is not required for any business unit, approval is effectively turned off for events and all events will be set to the Posted status automatically. To define workflow pricing rules, use the Dynamic Pricing Workflow Rules component.

This section discusses how to assign approval by business unit.

Page Used to Assign Approval Processes for Sourcing Events

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
Assign Approval by Business Unit	AUC_WF_BU_ASSIGN	Set Up Financials/Supply Chain, Product Related, Sourcing, Assign Business Unit Approval	Assign approval by business units.

Assigning Workflow Rules to Business Units

Access the Assign Approval by Business Unit page.

Business Unit and Description

Displays the name and description of the business unit.

Approval Required

Select the check box to indicate if approvals are required for a specific business unit.

If approval is required for an event business unit, the approval workflow engine will run the event through the defined approval process (Event Approval) when the event creator clicks the Post button on the Event Summary page (Sourcing, Create Events, Event Details.) No process or manual intervention is required.

Sourcing plans do not use the business unit assignment functionality. Sourcing plans automatically run the Plan Approval process when the plan is posted.