Development of a Client Application for External Approval of Modular Questionnaires in Process Projects

This topic explains how to develop a client application that uses the Supplier Data API with Pagination and the External Approval API for Sourcing and Supplier Management to enable external approval of modular questionnaires in process projects.

The following workflow describes API-based external approval of modular questionnaires in process projects.

  1. A template creator in your organization enables API-based external approval in the process project template. This enablement includes creating a placeholder approval task on the process project intake form and specifying the external tasks for modular questionnaires that will use API-based external approval as predecessors.

  2. In the process project framework, completion of approvals for predecessors triggers API-based approval for those modular questionnaires for which it is enabled.

  3. The client application uses the GET vendors/{vendorId}/processes/{wid} endpoint to get the process project workspace ID.

  4. The client application uses the GET /Workspaces/ endpoint and the process project workspace ID to retrieve the IDs (externalWorkspaceIDs) of the linked modular questionnaires. For example:

    GET {{runtime_URL}}/sourcingapproval/v1/prod/Workspace/WS1312882411?realm=mysitename

  5. The client application uses these IDs to retrieve questionnaire details, attachments, completed approvals, and other information for the linked modular questionnaires. The output of the GET /Workspaces/ endpoint for the linked modular questionnaires includes the document ID of the intake form in the associated process project. For example:

    "entityType": "RFXDocument",
"projectItemType": "Document",
"isProcessIntakeForm": true,
"format": "Questionnaire",
"title": "Strategic Qualification Intake Form",
"version": "v1",
"aribaType": "ariba.sourcing.rfx.RFXDocument",
"workspaceTitle": "Strategic Qualification Process",
"id": "Doc13138903",

  6. Approvers complete approvals in the external system.

  7. The client application returns approval results and comments to SAP Ariba.

  8. Once approvals for all required modular questionnaires in a process project are complete, either a decision maker can manually make a final status decision for the process or automatic status assignment rules can assign a final status.