Preparation and Customizing of the Approval Workflow 

Defining the Organizational Plan

Data is entered in the time sheet by an employee or administrator, and then approved by another person with the required authorization. You can choose which SAP users you want to approve the data. They may be the immediate superior of the person who entered the data, or project managers, for example.

If you use the standard task Approval (TS40007901), the person who entered the data releases it for approval, and then specifies the appropriate agent (user ID), or enters an object, which the system uses to determine the agent according to the organizational plan.

The person who entered the data can choose between the following organizational plan objects to select the agent:

Several agents can be entered for one object. In this case, the work item appears in the integrated inbox of each of these agents. If one of the agents executes the work item, it is no longer displayed in the integrated inbox of the other agents.

If you use the standard tasks Approval2 (TS20000459) or Approval3 (TS20000460), the recipient is assigned automatically; the person who entered the data must not therefore enter the agent manually. If your profile has not been set up for the recipient to be determined automatically, the system proposes the time administrator or superior assigned to the person who entered the data as the workflow recipient. The person who entered the data can then confirm the recipient proposed or manually enter an alternative recipient as for the standard task Approval (TS40007901).

Assigning Users if You Use an Organizational Plan

To define a suitable organizational plan for the scenario, perform the Edit Organizational Plan step in the Implementation Guide (IMG). Choose Basis ® Business Management ® SAP Business Workflow.

For general information on SAP Business Workflow, see the SAP Library. Choose BC - Basis -> Business Management -> SAP Business Workflow.

For more information on setting up workflow, see the Reference Documentation for SAP Business Workflow.

Assigning Users if You Do Not Use an Organizational Plan

You can still use SAP Business Workflow even if you have not yet maintained your organizational plan. In this case, the person entering data in the time sheet specifies the appropriate agent by entering the agent’s SAP user ID.

If you want to use this procedure, you must define the standard task as a general task. You can assign all SAP users that are set up in the system to a general task .

If you use this method, you can bypass SAP HR Organizational Management, which you use to select agents according to functional and organizational criteria. However, not just any SAP user can issue approvals with this procedure: you control who is responsible for issuing approvals using the authorization concept.

Application-Specific Customizing

The approval procedure is an optional part of the time sheet. You can determine whether data entered using a certain data entry profile must undergo an approval procedure when you maintain your profiles.

If you want to trigger the approval procedure using SAP Business Workflow, make the following settings for each data entry profile:

  1. In the IMG, choose Time Sheet -> Time Recording -> Set Up Data Entry Profiles.
  2. Select the data entry profile for which you want to set up SAP Business Workflow.
  3. In the General settings section, select the Approval required field to activate the approval procedure.
  4. In the Workflow section, select the Workflow approval field and enter the task ID number in the relevant field.

In the standard system, you can use the following standard tasks: