MB-310 Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Workflows configuration Part 2

2. Workflow configurations continued

Welcome back. In this video, we will look at complex workflow configurations. Okay, let us just take a look at this video that is available here. I’m taking an example where once the document is submitted for approval, then it should get approved by one of the managers who are available in the group. Just think about this case. In the organization, there are at least three different managers and one of these managers approving the document is good enough. Okay, so that is the case that we are taking here. And next level is we are checking if the journal value is less than $10,000 and if it is less than $10,000, it doesn’t require any further approval. So that is the S side of it. It doesn’t require any approval. And if it is more than $10,000, so that is where it requires the CFO approval. Okay, this is what we are going to configure. Now, let us get into the system now. All right, so we are here. Before we move forward with the workflow configuration, I would like to show you this one. Metaphor click once launcher. So I forgot to introduce you to this one. So please download this extension to the Chrome. So search for this and you will see this Chrome extension.

So install this Chrome extension and only then you will be able to open up your workflow configuration. Okay? So ensure that this is installed and let us now go back. I am going back to my general ledger workflows, right? So by the way, I am in the newly created SGPC legal entity. So this is the company that we are practicing, right? So we can go ahead and create our new workflow into this company, right? So let me just create a new workflow and take this ledger. Daily Journal Workflow my workflow configuration window is now open. And let us close this all error pin. Scroll it down and take this end element here. Right, fine. So what is that we wanted to do? Firstly, there should be a group of approvers, right? So since we are talking about the approval immediately, you’ll be taking the approval element, right? So we are not checking any condition here. We are directly routing it to approvers. Okay, so connect this start element to the approval element and double click on this one to get into the steps. So in the step one in fact, you can change the titles of these approval elements.

So that is where it makes it easier for you to understand when you look into the workflow history from the document. So right click this and click on the properties. So here I can say manager’s approval. Okay, close this and get into the step one. I did a right click here and properties. So what is the work item subject? So this time, let us use the placeholders here. So I’m saying GL Journal approval with a placeholder. We will take the journal number here. So I will explain to you what happens if you take this placeholder. So you see here, this is a placeholder that we are taking the journal batch number. Insert it. So what’s going to happen now is that this is going to come like a subject. So GL journal approval for journal batch number.

So this placeholder will get replaced with the journal batch number, okay? So that way the work item subject will be clear for the approver where he will see that this is related to the journal document number six five nine or six, six one or whatsoever. Okay? And in the work item instructions. So even here I will be able to use the placeholders even in the work item instructions. This is like a male body email body. So you can use another placeholder here if you want. So based on the requirements, you will be using different fields here as your placeholders so that when the mail gets triggered, they’ll be able to see every information there. Let us do one thing, let us give some information to the approver right there in the email. We’re going to give some information there. What I want is I need the journal debit value. Okay? I’m scrolling it up. So at the bottom I have this workflow originator.

So who submitted the workflow? So let us insert that and journal debit total or credit total. Let us take one of them. So in the email that approver receives, so he’ll be seeing these two values there in the mail subject, sorry, male body, right? One is who submitted the document? So we’re going to say like submitted by this user and the other one is total credit value. Okay. So this information will be helpful for the approver, right? So what we’re going to say is even here, geo journal approval for journal batch number. This, yeah, this is good enough I think right here. So in the name, I’m just modifying the name so that when we are looking at the workflow history, we will be able to easily track it. Like how is the document traversing? Okay, I will show you how this one is going to help us in terms of troubleshooting the issues with the workflow. All right, so enter the name here and let us go to this assignment. Now in the previous video we looked at the simple workflow configuration where we assigned it to a user, right? Now what we do is we assign it to a participant.

So take this participant and go to this role based here. Click on this and here, select this user group participants here. Why are we doing this? Because we mentioned that one of the managers approving it is good enough, right? So that is the reason we are taking this as user group participants. And here you will be able to see the user groups that are created. Okay, so I am taking this user groups. I am taking this user group that we created, right? This travel expense approvers. So that way, what system does is it will assign the document to all the users who are available in this particular user group. Okay? Then our condition is that one of them is approving is good enough, right? So that is an important thing to remember. So usually what happens is that when you assign it to the group of approvers, then perhaps all of them need to approve this document.

So that’s what system believes, right? So what you do is go to this completion policy. So this is one of the parameters that we are looking at right now. Completion policy defines how should the approval be handled. So should all the approvers be approving the document in this particular group or one of them approving is good enough. So if you say a single approver, then it is like one of them approving the document is good enough. Okay? And majority of the approvals only if majority of the group approves it, only then it is considered as approved. Or else you can also define the percentage of approvers. For example, only at least 70% of the approvers approve the document. Only then it is considered as approved. However, throughout my experience, I have majorly used a single approval or all approvers. So I don’t think that you will get any requirement about this majority and percentage. But however, if you get any complex requirements, certainly you can make use of these two parameters as well, right? Fine. And what about this time limit?

So you can set a timeline, a deadline for the document to get approved. Otherwise, without a deadline, it will be lying there forever and ever, right? So that is the reason you give a deadline here. That is also something that you capture as a requirement when you’re doing the discussions with the end users. So the approval task must be completed within how many days? For example, you can put it like within days, within three days that must get approved. And you can say that non calendar, when you say non calendar, it’s going to be like our system is not going to look for your calendar. And if you say work calendar, you’ll be able to choose a calendar here.

So you will be able to define the organization calendars here. Like which days are holidays for the organization, like Saturday and Sunday and even the public holidays, right? So you will be able to configure even the calendar. Let us not look at that for now, because in general, it is only non calendar that will be used. But however, if you want to configure yes, you will be able to create a calendar and select the calendar here. Again, you will have the calendars in the organization and Administration module. So go ahead and create a calendar and use that calendar here. Okay? So for now, let us leave it to non calendar and put it to these days here. All right? So this is done. So close this. I’m going to talk about the condition and the escalation little later. So close this and you see here. What is it saying? You must define at least one outgoing sequence flow for approval element, right? So what it is telling us is from here, there is no outgoing flow.

So after this is done, system doesn’t really know what should happen after this, right? So there is a reason you’ll have to connect that with the end element and you see that the error is gone already, right? So I don’t want to anyways connect it to the end element right now. So we’ll work on the other conditions and before that, let us get into the steps once again. And for the sake of understanding, I would like to add another step into this one. Okay? So this is something that I did not put it in the video that I’ve shown you, but let us consider that as an additional step here. So what is this step? Let us assume that we need an administrator approval as well.

Okay? So you’re going to put your work item subjects here so you can use the same placeholders and everything. So for now, let us not worry about it because we learned about the placeholders in the previous element, right? So now let us not talk about it. And in the assignment this time, I am taking this participant and let us go to the role based here. We looked at the user group based participants, right? So similarly, you can choose the security role participants, okay? You can say security participants and you will see the list of security roles available in the finance and operations, okay? Out of them, I want this to be going to the System administrator. So the reason that I’m configuring this step is just that you know that multiple steps can be configured within one approval element. So sometimes what happens is that you get the requirements. Like firstly, it should go to approver one and then it should go to another approval and then to another approver, right? So in that case, you don’t really need to create three different approval elements here.

You can just go ahead and create one approval element and within one element, you can put multiple steps within that. Okay? So that is a reason for me to show you this here. Now, after this, what is that? We wanted we want System to check for the value of the journal, right? So whenever you want to evaluate a condition, that is when you will be introducing this conditional decision, okay? Because to which approval it should go is decided based on the condition evaluation, right? If the value is greater than 10,000, it should behave one way, and if it is not, then it should take a different route, right? So after this is done, connect it to this condition. Okay? So we connected it to the condition and what is the condition. So again click on this element and you can click on this properties here. So journal credit value is less than $10,000. This is what we want to check.

And you see here still you’re getting the error message here. So you must define a condition for conditional decision element, right? So since we are saying this is a conditional element, obviously you will have to define the condition. So how do you define the condition? You see here, you can add the condition here, say add a condition where ledger, journal table table you scroll it down and you see different values here. So when you start working on the implementations or supporting the projects, you might get a lot of requirements there. So somebody will tell you that if the journal has a non UST currency then they want it to be routed to someone else. Then what you do is you will check for the currencies and somebody will tell you that if the department is, let’s say sales and marketing it should go to the department manager, right? So based on your requirements you will be looking at the specific field to evaluate the condition.

Okay? But in this case we are looking at the total credit value. So ledger, journal table, journal credit total so take this and if it is less than $10,000, right, so let us take the Singapore dollar for now for the sake of easy understanding, let’s take the Singapore dollar here because we are creating this for our SGPC company. The default currency is SGD and that is the reason you got your default currency as SGD here. So let that be as SGD and go ahead to close this. Okay? So what is the condition that we are evaluating right now? If the journal credit total is less than 10,000 Singapore dollars then what should actually happen? You don’t require any further approval, right? If this is true then connect it to the end element because we don’t need anything else there.

And if it is greater than 10,000, that is where we require the CFO approval. So take this approval element and go to properties here, name it like CFO approval. All right, close this and double click this and even before that connect this to the CFO approval. Double click this one and within the step, CFO approval step. All right, done. So GL journal approval for GL number, insert the placeholder. So we wanted to take the journal batch number. So only problem is that you will not have the filter here. So you’ll have to scroll it down to find the one that you are looking for. Tag on the journal number and here let us put the same thing and go to this assignment.

And here we are talking about the participant once again. So let us go to the participant because we said that it should be going to the CFO. So there are two ways that you can configure this one is that you can select the user and you can select your CFO user ID here, right? But the best practice is that you can configure it by participant. So when you take the participant and go to the role based and look at the security role participants so what this actually means is that you’re assigning it to the users who hold the security role as CFO. So that way, what happens is that tomorrow, if there is a change of the CFO in the organization because let’s assume that we got a new CFO then you don’t need to disturb your workflow configuration. What happens is that system assigns this to the user who is in that particular role. So you have the Chief financial officer this particular role. Right. With this we configured it to go to the CFO alright, done with this and let us go to the Escalation.

Now you can define if no action is taken then what should happen to this document right? So use this Escalation path and you see here you can straightforward take an action here where select the action to take if the users in the Escalation path failed to act within the time limit. So within that time limit that we provided and within that three days time if no action is taken on this particular document then what you do you want to automatically reject this document so let the submitter reinitiate the process, okay? Or else you can make it like automatically approving it and in a majority of the cases you will set this action to reject okay? Or else in fact the best thing is that you look at this one here you can escalate it to a particular user within the organization or else you can escalate it to the approvers manager, right? So that way you are letting the manager of the approver know that this guy is not taking an action on this one right? So here for now let us take this as user and choose a user here admin.

So if no action is taken within that time limit then it should be like going to the admin user. And even this one will have some certain time limit. So within one day this guy should act on this document. And even this guy, if he doesn’t take any action, then comes the next one where automatically the document will be rejected. OK? So let us set it to no calendar, right? So that is about different settings that you have here and I will talk about this condition a little later so close this and go back connect it to the end element right? So we are good. So what happens now? Let us review it once the document is submitted it goes to a manager for approval right? So here I’m not complicating the scenario so it goes to a group of managers in the organization that’s all. So it is not going to go to the employee who submitted his manager. So it’s not going to the employees manager. It is directly going to a group of managers within the organization. Okay? And then we are checking the value of the journal and then if it is greater than $10,000, then it should go to the CFO for approval. All right, so that is it here. Save this and say okay, activate the new version.

Say okay, I am back in my SGPC company and I’m going to the general ledger workflows. So you see here, our newly created workflow is available here. All right? So let us duplicate this and what we do is we go to the journal names in this company as GPC company and then we’re going to tag this workflow ID, right? So go to journal names here. I have only one journal name that we created. Say Approval workflow and select the workflow ID. Alright? Say yes and save it. Okay? I’m doing it in the SGPC company because I want your practice company SGPC get running. I want that you be in a position to create your new workflow and everything in your new company. Right now what we do is let us go ahead and create a new general journal.

So create a new record here and select the journal name and you see the post button is disabled and your workflow is enabled. Right click on the lines to go to the account. So let us take the pretty cash account here. All right. So departments and cost centers. So a credit of $15,000. Okay? And this is for purchase expenses. Let’s take it and done. So what is it telling me? Blank is not allowed for business unit for the combination. So let us see where it is. So business unit must be selected. That’s what it is telling me. So let me select that and the department and the cost center. So I’m not putting any focus on these dimensions right now because we are talking about the workflow configurations. All right, so this is saved and close this and still you do not see the post button because it requires an approval. Close this and submit it. So you can put some comments here as a submitter. End users will be able to put some comments there.

So let us go to the workflow history now to see what is actually happening on this one. When you come here initially you might see that workflow activated and as the batch processing is running in the behind, it will take a little time for you to see this is progressing. Just try to refresh it and you might see something is happening here. Okay? And in this particular case, you might also get some errors. I intentionally did not look for the configuration and everything because I want you to understand how do you troubleshoot the workflow problems, right? So let me just refresh it once again, you see here there is some problem. So approval started. So where exactly it is failing now. So you can see here, firstly you can see here the status is telling me that it is stopped because of an error. And what is that error? Work item could not be created. Insufficient security permissions for user April.

Okay? That is what it is telling me. Let us see how do we fix it now. Because this is something that you will be doing in your role as well. So here it is going to the manager’s approval step and this is where it is failing. And it clearly tells me that insufficient security permissions for this user. Okay? So let us see what is wrong with this user now. Duplicate this. So I’m searching for users form. So this is where all your users within the application can be seen and it is talking about April, right? So let us go to April user and why is it talking about April? Because April is one of the approvals in the travel expense approvals group. Okay? So I’m taking you to the groups so that you clearly understand why is it going to April. Search for user groups. And here, this is the one that we took in our configuration. So go to the users and you see here. So we have only two users there, one is April and the other one is test. So April, it is not able to go to April because she doesn’t have any rules which will grant her access to the general journals form itself. So when she cannot even get into this general journals, how can she approve it? She can’t. And that is the reason that system is telling me that she doesn’t have enough rights.

Okay, so sometimes the situations like this will come up and you will have to go to the customer and you have to tell them like you see that user doesn’t have the rights and that is the reason you’re getting the problem. Okay? Then they’ll see like if the April user needs to be given access or else should she be removed from the approval group completely. So that is the decision that they’ll have to take. All right? So for now what I’m doing is I am assigning the accounting manager role because I know that I got this information from the customer where April is a new accounting manager and that is the reason that she is also part of the GL approvals.

Okay? So that’s what I understand. So we decided that accounting manager role should be given to her, right? So once this action is taken, what do you do here? So go back to your workflow history and this is something that you will be doing as an admin user. So somebody who is an administrator within your customers organization, they will have to come here and resume this. Okay, let us wait for it to progress. So workflow resumed. So let us refresh it.

So there will be a batch process running, so which will look at all the documents that are submitted for workflow and it will be assigning the documents to the next level approved. So I refreshed it and you can see here after the workflow is resumed and you got the work items created. So whenever you see the work item created, a step here. That means that that is where system assigned it to an approver. You see here, assigned to user April. Okay? And here it is assigned to another user, right? And the due dates are also given there. Fine.

So you can see the list of approvers who should be approving it, all right? So that is how you can troubleshoot the issues with the workflow. And what we do is this is something that you should be knowing as a consultant. When you’re doing the configurations and you are testing them, sometimes you cannot go and ask them to approve it for you, right? So in your test environment, you are configuring these workflows, right? So you cannot ask another person to be approving it for you to test your workflows. Then what you do is you can reassign it to yourself because in this case, we are testing our configuration. Then assign it to yourself. So myself, being an administrator, I can reassign it to myself. Okay, then refresh it. So my user ID is associated to this employee, which is like I am Julia here. So close this. Now try to refresh the screen.

And this is the one, right? Click on workflow. You see here, I’m getting the approval action here, right? Go ahead and approve this. And even before we approve it, let us go to the dashboard. I clicked on this finance and operations so that I can go to the home page, scroll it down. You see here, what is it telling me? So I got the journal number, right? So I got this notification here and I got the Journal number. I also know that who submitted it, submitted by this and what is the total credit value. You see, this information is helpful, isn’t it? And even the same information goes to the user in email. So in this case, I would also receive an email.

Okay, so we did not do the email configuration and everything, but you will be able to do it and get the emails triggered to the users. Okay, so I’m going back to this one to approve this. So this is the recent one, right? Go ahead and approve this. So if you have any comments, you’ll be able to add them in the comments section, right? So go back to the Journal. And as an admin, I’m still trying to look at the history of it so that I know what is going to happen next. Correct. You see here, Work item is created and it is assigned to April user. And we reassigned it to ourselves. And that is where you can see this work item delegated step here. So where it is delegated from April to Julia. So in this case, I am Julia and I have the administrator role, okay? And that is approved by Julia, which is me, right? And at the same time, you have this another work item to another user, another manager, right? However, what was our completion policy? One of them approving it is good enough, right? So that is the reason this should be automatically completed now and it should be moving to the next step. So let us just wait for it. While I am waiting for this one to get completed, I got a doubt, perhaps we configured it to get it approved by all approvers.

And what I did is I opened up my workflow configuration to see their setting. And when I go to this manager’s approval and look at the properties and look at the completion policy, you see here, what did we set here? We talked about all of these options, but we did not set it to single approval. And that is the reason it is waiting for the approval, even for the other approval. Okay? So it might happen in your projects as well. So customer might come to you and tell you that we are expecting it to be considered as approved. If one of them approving it, then what you have to do is go back to this and check this and see if it is set to single approver or all approvers, right? In our case, since it is set to all approvers, it is obviously waiting for the other approval also to approve it, okay? So what we do is let us go to this user, okay? Because I have it open here.

So let me start the new session and let us go to the work items for this test user. Okay? So I’m in the test user session and this is the latest one you see here. So it is waiting for his approval. Go ahead and approve this. Okay? So I’m back to my administrator view and I closed it so I can go back to the history and try to refresh it because it should be moving to the next level now, right? So refresh it and you can see here the action is already taken by the other approver. That is what I see here. Refresh it once again. All right? So you see this after the manager’s approval is completed. See, you got the information here that the step is completed. And then you see here another step started. So within the same approval element, we configured two steps, right?

So what did we configure here? So we said it should go to the security role participants, okay? So we said it should go to the administrators. And that is the reason. You see here you have four work items created. Why is it so? Because. Currently, four of these users have the security administrator role. Okay? So let’s go back to the configuration to quickly take a look at it. So this is our second step, right? Go to the properties and look at this assignment and role paste. So here we said it should go to the system administrator, okay? So in this company, in SGPC company or condos or company, there are four administrators and that is the reason it is going to all those four. Okay? And you see here the work items are created for all these four users.

And unfortunately, I think the completion policy is set to all approvers, you see, which means all of them need to approve it, only then it gets approved, right? So to reduce the recording time, what I can do is let me just quickly get it approved by stopping this recording. All right, I’m back with you again. And I’ve got that approved. I’m showing you in the workflow history for the same document. I clicked on this and go to the history, scroll it down, and you see here. So within the approval step, I’ve got it approved by all those four admin users. And there is a reason. You see here, work item created and approved. Work item created, delegated, and then approved, right? So I’ve actually approved it from all those four work items. And you can see here, the approval is completed. So step is completed, administrator approval step is completed, and the whole approval element is completed. All right? And here you can see here, manager’s approval is completely done. And next, the conditional decision evaluation. Okay? And you see here a journal. Credit value less than $1,000. So if you write this kind of descriptions for your elements, you’ll be able to easily know what is actually happening there. Okay? So evaluated to false, because our credit value is 15,000, which is greater than 10,000, right? So that is the reason it is evaluated to false. Then you see here the approval started and it is going to the CFO for approval work item created. And it is assigned to Sarah Thomas, okay? Because she being the CFO, it is assigned to her. And if I approve this as Sarah, because I’m reassigning it to myself now.

So I’m doing all this just to save some time here, because I cannot log in as Sara and then keep approving these documents, right? So that is the only reason that I’m delegating it to myself. And I’m sure that you will also do the same thing when you actually start configuring the workflows for your customer in the projects right?

Now, let us go ahead, because you will have to test them. You cannot keep going to those people and ask them to approve the documents for you. So go ahead and refresh it and approve it, okay? So this is approved by CFO as well. Scroll it down and refresh it. You can see that the workflow step is completed, the status is completed. Right. Because it is approved by CFO as well. So with this, your workflow configuration is completely done. And if you refresh it as a submitter, I see the option to be able to post it. All right, so this is how the workflow complex workflows can be configured, and you understand how the workflow history will show you sufficient information to understand the issues with your workflow. Okay, so I don’t want it to be a more extensive session. And with a few more small configurations, I will close this in the next video. All right, so that’s all for this video. And thank you so much for watching.