(Enterprise)

Approval flows

In general, the approval process includes the following user interactions, all of which are carried out with an HTML browser. Approvers receive notifications of all approval requests by e-mail.

1. The system determines whether approval is required for the organization performing the particular action.

2. An approver is selected from the appropriate approver member group.

3. If approval is not required, preprocessing and postprocessing tasks are initiated.

4. If approval is required, the preapprove command is invoked and the approval request is stored. E-mail notifications are sent to approvers.

5. An approver checks the list of approval requests awaiting approval and approves or rejects them. Optionally, the approver can add comments.

6. If approved, the post-approve command, if any, is invoked. If rejected, the post-reject command, if any, is invoked.

7. The submitter can check the approval status throughout the process and view the approver's comments.

For example, when an organization signs up for RFQ response approvals, an RFQ response approval member group is created for the organization. All of the organization's users who have been given a Sales Manager role will be implicitly placed into this group. The organization administrator can add or modify the rules determining which user roles are implicitly placed within a particular approval member group. They can also explicitly place users within a particular approval member group. Use the Organization Administration Console and WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to manage approvals. Note that approval requests and approval submissions are two different ways of looking at the same thing:

• Approval requests are approvals that have been submitted and require an approver's attention

• Approval submissions are requests that you have made and are waiting for approval

We can work with approval requests using the Organization Administration Console. As well, We can use the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to work with both approval requests and submissions. The approval process also involves commands in the three following categories:

Preapproval task command

Preapproval task commands are run before the approval of an approvable action within a business process enabled for an organization. For example, before order approval, the command that checks inventory is run to ensure that the product is in stock. If it is in stock, the approval request is passed on to the approver.

Post-approval task commands

If an approvable action is approved, a post-approval task commands, if any, is run. For example, the post-approve task command might automatically update an inventory.

Post-rejection task commands

If an approvable action is rejected, a post-rejection task command, if any, is run. For example, the post-reject task command might check the monetary value of the order and notify a manager if it is above a certain amount.

More specifically, when an organization signs up for a specific approver member group, users having a particular user role are implicitly placed in that group. Any user with the default role for that organization becomes an approver for the corresponding action. There are five approver member groups, one for each business process to which approvals can be applied:

Process subject to approval	WebSphere Commerce default approval groups	Default role with authority to approve
Contract submissions approvals Disable inherited contract submissions approvals	Contract Submit Approvals DisableInherited Contract Submit Approvals	Sales Manager
Order processing approvals Disable inherited order processing approvals	Order Process Approvals DisableInherited Order Process Approvals	Buyer approver
Reseller registration Disable inherited reseller and buyer registration approvals	Reseller Registration Approvals DisableInherited Reseller Registration Approvals	Channel Manager
Buyer registration Disable inherited buyer registration approvals	Reseller Registration Approval - name of store's organization DisableInherited Reseller Registration Approval - name of store's organization	Seller Administrator and Channel Manager
RFQ response approvals Disable inherited RFQ response approvals	RFQ Response Approvals DisableInherited RFQ Response Approvals	Sales Manager
User registration Disable inherited user registration approvals	User Registration Approvals DisableInherited User Registration Approvals	Seller Administrator or Buyer Administrator for new approval groups. When the bootstrap data is loaded a user registration approval group is created for the root organization. That group contains one user: -1000 (wcsadmin).

Note: Users with the Site Administrator role can approve all approval processes.

Disable the inherited approval authority that a child organization has inherited from its parent organization means that the child organization no longer has the same approval access as its parent. In order for an organization to override the parent organization's approval requirement, the disable member groups are included in the list of approval levels for an organization. The Site Administrator can open the Organization Administration Console, select Access Management > Find Organizations to find organizations to work with. From this list, the Site Administrator can select an organization and click Approval to view a list of approval groups for the organization and select approval groups from this list and move them to the Selected approvals list. By default, the root organization has the User Registration Approvals group added to the Selected roles list and the default organization has the DisableInherited User Registration Approvals group added to the Selected approvers list. The implication of this default setting is as follows:

• A user registering to any organization except the default organization requires approval, unless this organization explicitly disables the approval.

• A user registering to the default organization does not require approval.

Note: If an organization administrator does not sign up for an approver member group, approval will not be enabled for the associated business process. This means that all instances of that particular process are automatically approved.

• Reseller and buyer registration approval flow
  The approval flow for a reseller or buyer registration is very similar to the approval flow for user registration. The reseller and buyer registration approval flow is the approval flow used when a reseller first registers. Upon registration, WebSphere Commerce creates an organization and a reseller administrator and both are approved at the same time. Once the organization approval record is approved, the reseller administration registration approval record is approved.

• Contract approval flow
  A contract changes states several times from the time it is created until the time it is deleted. In most cases, the change of state is triggered by actions you take. Some state changes occur automatically. The approval state is optional.

• Order approval flow
  When a user in a buying organization submits an order for processing, the order system sends a notification message to the approver listed in the buying organization's profile, asking for order approval. If the approver approves the order, the Order subsystem continues to process the order, capturing the payment and sending the order to a fulfillment center. If the order is rejected and you have added a customization to implement OrderRejected emails, the order system sends a notification message to the user with a rejection reason.

• User registration approval flow
  WebSphere Commerce member data is stored in one of two repository types: the WebSphere Commerce database, the directory server.

• RFQ response flow
  In the RFQ response flow, several stages have "states" associated with them. States represent the status of the response process at a certain time in its lifecycle. States help the user track a particular business process and provide WebSphere Commerce with benchmarks it can use to manage all business processes within the system.

Related tasks
Approving or rejecting approval requests
Attaching remarks to an approval decision