ByDesign 1808 Release: Analytical Report – Approval Task Details

Introduction: –

The approval process related to a business document specifies at each step a person responsible to approve the document once certain conditions meet. This configuration is referred to as Multi-Step Approval Process(MSA).

Consider an example of shopping cart –

Step 1: “Reporting Line Unit Manager” approval from User X if the total net value of cart < 1000USD

Step 2: “Cost center manager” approval from User Y if total net value of cart > 1000USD & < 2000USD

Step 3: “Purchasing Unit Manager” approval from User Z if total net value of cart > 2000USD & < 3000USD

 

Problem Description: –

When conditions in the approval process step(s) are met, task(s) are created for the responsible(s) which the responsible can then approve/reject. Customers would like to analyze the time it takes at each step to approve a document and explore the possibility to reduce the time taken.

Scenarios could include –

• Who are the approvers who take more time to approve a document?
• Who needs a follow-up?
• How many approvals get corrected before getting approved?

 

Solution: –

An analytical report to display all the approval tasks details related to a business document would provide information that can be extracted to address the scenarios above.

 

Scope of the analytical Report: –

The scope of the analytical report is currently restricted to documents enabled for Multi-Step Approval (MSA).

 

Data Source Details –

Approval Task Details – BTMAPPV01

Fields exposed as a part of the MDAV: –

 

 

Pre-requisites for consuming the approval task details data source: –

 

1. The data source “Approval Task details” must be joined with a business document data source

Note: The data source “Approval Task details” cannot be consumed independently. If it is

          independently tried for consumption then an exception will be raised preventing the execution

          of the report.

 

2. Business Document data source should be set as the anchor data source.

 

3. The access context of the joined data source should be set to that of the application data source to ensure only users with relevant authorizations be able to execute the report

 

4. A report would have to be created over the joined data source to obtain approval task details.

 

5. Type of Join – Inner Join

 

6. Join Conditions – The Business Document UUID in Approval task details data source would be the joining parameter. This UUID would have to be joined with the UUID of the business document (from the other data source) for which the details are to be obtained.

 

Steps to be followed: – [ Ex: Purchase Order Approval Task Details]

Step 1:  

Go to work center Business Analytics -> Design Data Sources

 

Step 2:

Create a joined Data Source

 

Step 3:

Add “Purchase order header data” source as an anchor and select the necessary fields required for constructing the report as shown below.

 

Click on Next. Select all fields that are required and Click on Finish.

 

Step 4:

Click on joined data sources tab and then click on “Add” button to add the approval task details data source.

 

Step 5:

Now choose the “Approval task details” data source and then click on Next

 

Step 6:

From the left data source i.e. Purchase order header data select Purchase Order ID(UUID) and then from the right add Business Document UUID (DOC_UUID) field and click on Add to perform the join.

 

The join is now completed. This can be seen under Join Conditions. Click on Next to add fields from Approval Task MDAV.

 

 

Step 7:

Select all the fields from Approval task MDAV that apply and click on Finish. 

 

Step 8:

Ensure access context is set to that of the business document data source and that the business document data source is the anchor data source. This can be verified by the anchor sign seen under column “Join Conditions”.

 

 

Step 9:

On the created data source, create a report which will fetch approval task details for purchase order.

Go to work center Business Analytics->Design Reports and create a new report as shown below.

 

 

 

Step 10:

Select all the key figures, characteristics and its properties and then click on Finish

Note: At this stage please ensure that the field “Task Created Date” is set as a mandatory selection parameter. The report by default will run for all task instances in the system which is non-performant. Hence the recommendation is to run the report for a given period.

 

Step 11:

Execute the report to get all the approval task details for Purchase Order.

 

Important Considerations while executing the report: –

1. Field “Task created Date” should be set as a mandatory selection parameter while creating the report. If it is not set, the user should at least ensure that the report is executed with a filter on task created date. If it is not set appropriately it could significantly affect the performance of the report if the number of task instances in the system are huge.
2. For fields “Step Name” and “Subject” please ensure that the operator used is “Contains” and search with ‘*’. For ex: Step name contains *Step*2*

 

Limitations: –

1. The filter for Time attributes such as “Task created on Time” and “Task Completed on Time” would not work as expected. Please refrain from using these filters.
2. Delegations(substitutions) is out of scope for the analytical report. However substitutes can still be exposed once the approval task has been completed( adding column Completed By )

 

Quick Help – Business Document MDAVs (Header level) and the joining attributes: –