Weird Synchronous Dialog Chain & Substitution Problem

Fri Aug 15 12:04:38 EDT 2014

You guys are correct.  The problem was resolved by turning off “advance with dialog” on the first step of the synchronous dialog chain.  What I didn’t realize is that an active substitute is considered to be a “recipient” of a task if they are subbing for a “responsible” agent.  I also learned that on a synchronous dialog chain, you do not need to have “advance with dialog” turned on for the first step of the chain.  It is only required on the subsequent steps that you want to automatically execute.

The final thing to point out is a fundamental difference in how tasks are displayed in the Business Workplace compared to how they are displayed in the UWL.  In Business Workplace, all tasks are displayed together in one list, whether they came directly to you, or if they came to you via substitution:

[cid:image005.png at 01CFB880.7ADC3410]

But in the UWL, the user has the choice to view the items that came directly to them, items on behalf of someone else, or all items combined.  You don’t get these options in Business Workplace:
[cid:image006.png at 01CFB880.7ADC3410]

The point of that being that when the final approval task was being automatically started, the task was being reserved in the substitute’s queue so it only showed up under “My Items” in their UWL.  This no longer gave them the choice to leave the item for the original approver to process.

Loren Bratzler
Norfolk Southern Corporation

From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Rick Bakker
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2014 11:05 AM
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Subject: Re: Weird Synchronous Dialog Chain & Substitution Problem

Hi Loren,

I don't see what the problem is. If A is a substitute for B and A approves a workitem which leads to a new workitem being sent to B then I would expect it to automatically show up in A's inbox if Advance With Dialog is set. If you don't want this to happen then turn off AWD, as Mark suggested.

regards
Rick

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 9:03 PM, NAT GOVENDER <ngovender4 at toyota.co.za<mailto:ngovender4 at toyota.co.za>> wrote:
Hi Loren,

Please check in you container who are the excluded agents  for Task TS90000009.
I think that your excluded agent for task in second approver might be the initiator of first step.

Kind Regards

Nat Govender
Specialist - SAP Workflow
IT Parts Logistics
Toyota South Africa Motors (Pty) Ltd - Durban
T +27 31 910 2645<tel:%2B27%2031%20910%202645>  F+27  86 607 0414<tel:%2B27%C2%A0%2086%20607%200414>
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From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu<mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu> [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu<mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu>] On Behalf Of Bratzler, Loren
Sent: 12 August 2014 10:36 PM
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group (sap-wug at mit.edu<mailto:sap-wug at mit.edu>)
Subject: Weird Synchronous Dialog Chain & Substitution Problem

I have a weird problem that is occurring with a synchronous dialog chain when there is UWL substitution involved.

For our invoice approval workflow, the approval process is a two-step process.  The first step launches the CHANGE method of the FIPP business object.  Then the second step is a standard user decision step with approve and reject options.  We use the “advance with dialog” option on these two steps so that the user will automatically see the approve and reject buttons when they exit from the CHANGE screen for the business object (making this a synchronous dialog chain).  Our approval process is such that the immediate supervisor of the person who created the invoice is always the first approver of an invoice.  Then if that person does not have the necessary dollar authority, we determine a final approver and send an approval task to that second person.

The issue we are running into occurs if the first approver happens to also be a UWL substitute for the final approver.  When the first approver completes the user decision step (the second step of the two-step dialog chain), the final approver’s task is automatically starting in the first approver’s inbox.  This is causing the task to be reserved in the first approver’s inbox and the final approver never sees the task at all.

I did some testing in our QA system and was able to replicate the issue.  Here is the log when the first approver is not a UWL substitute for the final approver:

[cid:image001.png at 01CFB87E.36A07830]

And here is the log when the first approver is a UWL substitute for the final approver.  The difference being that the final approver’s task is being started automatically for the first approver:

[cid:image002.png at 01CFB87E.36A07830]

It doesn’t make sense that this is happening because the agents assigned to the first approver step (step 8) and the agent assigned to the final approver step (step 36) are not the same.
[cid:image003.png at 01CFB87E.36A07830]

[cid:image004.png at 01CFB87E.36A07830]

Has anyone ever run into something like this before?

Loren Bratzler
Norfolk Southern Corporation

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