Workflow Business Rules

As an administrator, you can modify certain business rules which define Workflow Service.

System Behavior

Consider this important system behavior when you configure workflow:

• If you create a Buying Organization that is at the highest level in a hierarchy of organizations, you must configure an Approval Template to enable Workflow Service.
• When you first create a Buying Organization that is at the highest level in a hierarchy of organizations, workflow rules for the organization are disabled.

To enable them, simply create an approval template and enable the appropriate rules for your organization. The approval template administration screen can be found by logging into the administrator, selecting the appropriate organization, and clicking Organization|...|Attributes|Workflow|Approval Template.

• Once the top-level organization in the hierarchy has an approval template established, all child organizations will automatically inherit that template.

If one of the child organizations wishes to override the inherited template, they can do so by creating another approval template following the same steps above. In other words, you either configure Approval Templates for a Buying Organization, or the organization inherits an Approval Template from its parent organization.

• By default, the workflow business rule you establish for a organization will apply to requisitions submitted in the organization.

If the rule is not explicitly established at that hierarchy level with an approval template, Workflow Service will search the parent Buying Organization for an inherited rule.

Configure Rules

You configure the business rules after an organization has an approval template. These are the rules you can configure for each Buying Organization:

• Approval Limits

You can assign a dollar limit that users can spend or approve. For example, you can configure a user with a $500. 00 spending limit and a $1000.00 approval limit. In this case, the user can spend up to $500 on their own Shopping Cart, Blanket Order, or Blanket Order Release, and can approve $1000 for other user's Shopping Cart.

• Quantity for Commodity Routing

You can require a commodity manager to approve a Shopping Cart, Blanket Order, or Blanket Order Release only if it contains more than a certain number of items for that commodity.

• Cost Center/ GL Account Requirements

You can require approval by a cost center or GL account owner if a user submits a Shopping Cart or Blanket Order that specifies that center or account.

• Supplier-specific Rules

You can require that the system routes requisitions for a particular supplier to a specific person, such as supplier manager or requester.

• Special Requests

You can require that the system routes all special request orders to a certain person.

• Shopping Cart Total Amount Rules
• You can require that the system routes all requisitions with a value greater than specified amount to be approved by a certain person. For example, this person may be a project or company controller.