How to approve workflow notifications as Workflow Administrator
By Jag - April 04, 2014
How to approve workflow notifications as Workflow Administrator
As a workflow developer it becomes difficult to test a workflow if we need to log in as the approver to approve a notification. If a workflow needs approval from multiple approvers then we need to log in to Oracle as so many users just to approve the notification. This testing process can take a very long time depending on the complexity of the workflow. We can reduce the time taken to test drastically if we act on the workflow notifications as the administrator. Log in to Oracle. Select a responsibility that has Workflow Administratorprivileges. You can check it from the database by executing the following query,
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| SELECT wr.display_nameFROM wf_roles wr, wf_resources wfrWHERE wr.NAME = wfr.text AND wfr.NAME = 'WF_ADMIN_ROLE' |
The responsibility name is given by the query, i.e. EY Workflow Administrator. This responsibility has Workflow System Administrator privileges. We shall now log in to EY Workflow Administratorresponsibility.
Click on Status Monitorlink.
Enter the name of the Workflow Type. You can type in the Internal name of the workflow if you know it. We shall enter the internal nameAPEXP (Expenses workflow) and choose the workflow status “In Process” so that we find all the Expenses workflow which need approvals.
Click on Go button. The list of workflows are displayed.
Let us select the top most workflow as it is the most recent Expense workflow. Select the workflow by clicking on the radio button.
Now click on Activity History. The Activity History page will open. Scroll down to see the activities.
You can now see the activities. You may need to scroll down on this page to view the activities. Now you can see the activity named, “Request Approval from APPROVER“, is waiting for approval from a user (known as Performer in workflow). Click on the blue box (
) in the notification column to open the notification.
) in the notification column to open the notification.
Now that the notification is open you can approve or reject the notification. At this point you are performing as the administrator but to Oracle the action will be taken as per the original performer, i.e. it will seem the user denoted as the performer has taken action. Let us approve the notification by clicking on Approvebutton. After Approve is clicked we are taken back to the workflow activities page.
On the workflow activity page, scroll up to the top of the page.
We now need to refresh the activity list as this list is old. Click on Monitor Searchlink to go back to the Status Monitor.
Select the same workflow and go back to the Activity page. Important: We have other options on this page.
| Buttons | Description |
| Activity History | This button takes you to the list of workflow activities performed by the workflow |
| Status Diagram | This button takes you to the page to display the workflow graphically. It also displays the activites have been performed and the activities that will be performed. |
| Participant Responses | This button takes you to the page that displays the responses of the notification |
| Workflow Details | This button takes you to the page that displays all the workflow attributes and their values. |
You can see that the next set of activities have taken place after the notification has been approved. In this way we can test for workflow processes without having to log in as a different user every time we need to approve, reject or view notifications. This saves valuable development and testing time. Important: Some workflows do not immediately take action after the notification is approved or rejected. It goes into deferred mode. In those cases you need to go to System Administrator responsibility and execute the Workflow Background Process program.
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