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SharePoint Designer Approval Workflow

Hello Everyone,

I need to create a workflow to approve leave plans in a calendar list. Below is the scenario...

Fields:
Employee Name
Process- (One approver for each process (I've about 10 processes)
Start Date - (Leave Start Date)
End Date - (Leave End Date)
Description - (Reason for Leave)
Leave State - (Tentative, Actual)

All the employees plan their leaves tentatively for the entire year in a spreadsheet & upload the details on to a list and view it as a calendar.

This allows us to see the periods where too many individuals planning to take off, and thereby plan the workflow accordingly

To keep the plan upto date, once in every month, employees would review their leave plans for that specific month and confirm the leaves as "actual", if not they would change the "tentative" dates as required.

What I'm looking is to create a workflow...

1) Which would assign a workflow task to the respective process lead to approve or reject, whenever there is a change or new item created in the list.
2) Workflow should shoot out an email to the employee letting them know the approval status with some comments.

Regards,
Sai

djpileggi

The way I would approach this workflow is by creating a large if...then...else on the first step to allow for the workflow to know which process lead to assign the task to. (Note: I suggest using a AD group, not a direct lead process lead account, this way you can change the user in the AD account instead of having to recompiling a new version every time a process lead leaves or changes) From this, part of the task should get information back from the process lead. Is the leave request accepted or rejected as well as any comments the approver will want to add. This will then go to the next step in the workflow to notify the requesting employee. An email will be sent out to let them know what the result was via email.

This two step workflow should be adaquate for your need.

Saichand

ASKER

djpileggi,

Could you please guide me through the steps? I'm quite new to the SharePoint Designer.

Regards,
Sai

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djpileggi

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Saichand

ASKER

Thankyou very much for the detailed steps, I would explore this tool more often going forward and might need your help in this forum...

I'm using 2007 and I could do it till step 8, however in step 9 I couldn't figure out how to change the approval state field to equal the task ID variable.

Thanks again, this would be very useful to me.

djpileggi

When trying to get information out of other lists in your workflow. If you think of it as a SQL query. It really helps alot. When you use the action Set field in current item. You are going to draw information from a different list (think table in SQL) Click on Field. Change it to the field you are changing. For this example I am going to call ProcessApproval. This is part of the list you are working with. Easy enough. Now to get the information out of another list. Click Value. Click the function button. Select your data source. In this case the Task list where the tasks are being created. For simplicity I will just say Tasks. The field from source is the field you want the value from. So in number 6 above I called it Decision. The next is to find the list item. This is the third drop down box. You want to select ID which is the task ID. The last box click function. Select Workflow Variable. Then select TaskID which we created way back in step 3. click ok. Your done. Easy. When you think of it as a SQL Statement, its a select statment.

SELECT Task(table... list in this case):Decision(Field in the table/list) WHERE ID(the task table/list key)=TaskID(our variable that knows which task we need)

Saichand

ASKER

Just one question, in number 6, using the link data you have created a field "Decision" through custom task wizard to collect whether it is approved or rejected, however I couldnot see the "Decision" option under field from source dropdown. Did I miss something?

djpileggi

I was using that as an example. Decision was the name I gave the field. For that field I suggested using a 'choice'. When you type in the choices use the decisions you want to give your leads. Approved and Denied I would assume.

Saichand

ASKER

I got it, Thanks for clarifying... The Workflow is working fine when I open the task. How can the approver get notified when there is a workflow created?

djpileggi

When the task is created, it should automatically send an alert out. If it is not, just check in the Task Library that you are using to house the tasks, go into List Settings, and in Advanced Settings > make sure email notifications are turned on. Or you can experiment and try different things with the workflow like adding send email action. dont be afraid to experiment. Not when this goes production though. Have a copy somewhere else.

Saichand

ASKER

Thankyou very much..!!