Deadline Monitoring in Workflows for Purchase Order

With deadline monitoring, approvers and creators of purchase order to know if the purchase order approval has crossed the deadline maintained in the workflow.

How it looks:

• Approver can see the purchase order marked as overdue in the app ‘My Inbox’

• Creator of the purchase order can see the same in the app ‘Manage Purchase Orders’ under the tab ‘Approval Details’:

Types of deadlines:

Types of deadlines:

There are 2 types of deadlines that can be configured:

• Workflow level deadline: In this, the deadline calculation starts for all the steps as soon as the workflow starts. Example: If the workflow has 3 level approval and the deadline is maintained as 10 minutes for the third level, then the deadline for this step starts as soon as the purchase order enters the first level approval.
• Step level deadline: In this, the deadline calculation starts as soon as the particular step is executed.

Example: If the workflow has 3 level approval and deadline is maintained as 10 minutes for third level, then the deadline for this step will start only when the purchase order reaches the third level of approval. This does not take into consideration the time spent on the previous levels/

How to Configure Deadline Monitoring for Purchase Order Workflow

Deadlines can be configured under the section ‘Step Sequence’ while creating a workflow. Go to tab ‘Deadlines’ and click on ‘Add’ button.

After clicking the Add button you will see the below pop-up:

1. In the first dropdown, choose the deadline type (step level or workflow level).
2. Enter the deadline time in minutes, hours, or days.
3. Under the section ‘Execute the following action:’, choose the action needed. As of now only ‘Mark step as overdue’ is available.
4. After specifying the details click on Create to add the deadline. After the deadline is created, it will be displayed as shown below.

Details in the app Manage Purchase Orders:

The below screenshot shows the ‘Approval Details’ tab for a purchase order that passed through 3 levels of approval. In the first two levels, the purchase order it was approved after the deadline was over. Hence ‘Finished Late’ is shown under the ‘Deadline’. The purchase order is in approval on third level, and has also crossed the deadline by 44 seconds. Hence ‘Overdue’ is marked for this level. Once the third level approval is over, this step will also be marked as ‘Finished Late’ under the tab ‘Deadline’.

Note:

1. If the deadline is not created for a particular step, then that step will not show any information about deadline in both the places (My Inbox for approver and Manage Purchase Orders for creator).

2. Whichever deadline comes first, will be executed.

   • Example: A workflow has 2 level of approval. First step level has Step Instance level deadline of 5 min and second step level has Instance level deadline of 3 min. And the first level is approved after 5 mins, then along with first level, second level will also be marked as Overdue. (Since the deadline for second level was only for 3 min).