Giving Power Users the Tools – Creating an Approval Workflow with SharePoint Designer – Part 2

Overview

Part 1 has almost all the steps you need to complete the workflow. In Part 2, I will go over the conditions for the next steps and a few possible outcome steps for an approved workflow. It is important to realize that SharePoint Workflows complete Step by Step regardless of the outcome of each step, and that a workflow will not stop unless you tell it to do so.

Conditions for Management Approval Process.

Step 1. Similar to Step 3 in Part 1. Create a New Step and rename it to Collect Management Approval.

Step 2. Set the Condition as Initiation: WorkFlow Status Equals TeamLeadApproved

Step 3. Add an action to Collect Management Approval similar to Step 4 to Step 6 in Part 1.

Step 4. Create a Step to send out email notifications called “Confirm Management Approval” Similar to Step 7 to Step 11 in Part 1. In the conditions look for the ManagementApprovalID instead of the TeamLeadID. Remember that when you compare these values you are looking up a Task by ID and not looking up the value directly.

Step 5. Make sure that you add the condition to Stop the workflow if the Management Approval equals Reject. The end result should look like this:

If you forget to stop the workflows and set the status then un-approved actions will execute.

Step 6. Create a new Step for the approved action. If you wish you can place conditions on this action so that it will only run if both the TeamLeadApproval and Management Approval Tasks are “Approved”, but if you have setup your workflow correctly these conditions are unnecessary. From this point you have all the different options for workflows open. You can use this process to create:

• Calendar Entry
• List Entry
• Update the Status of a Document
• Assign a Task