You can automate the process of approving new or changed records, such as documents, journal lines, and customer cards, by creating workflows with steps for the approvals in question. Before you create approval workflows, you must set up an approver and substitute approver for each approval user. You can also set approvers’ amount limits to define which sales and purchase records they are qualified to approve. Approval requests and other notifications can be sent as email or internal note. For each approval user setup, you can also set up when they receive notifications.
In addition to the Workflow functionality within Business Central , you can integrate to Microsoft Flow to define workflows for events in Business Central . Note that although they are two separate workflow systems, any Flow template that you create with Microsoft Flow is added to the list of workflow templates within Business Central . For more information, see Using Business Central in an Automated Workflow.
You can set up and use workflows that connect business-process tasks performed by different users. System tasks, such as automatic posting, can be included as steps in workflows, preceded or followed by user tasks. Requesting and granting approval to create new records are typical workflow steps. For more information, see Workflow.
This walkthrough illustrates the following tasks:
To complete this walkthrough, you will need the CRONUS International Ltd. demonstration company.
Sean is a super user at CRONUS. He creates two approval users. One is Alicia who represents a purchasing agent. The other is himself representing Alicia’s approver. Sean then gives himself unlimited purchase approval rights and specifies that he will receive notifications by internal note as soon as a relevant event occurs. Last, Sean creates the required approval workflow as a copy of the existing Purchase Order Approval Workflow workflow template, leaves all existing event conditions and response options unchanged, and then enables the workflow.
To test the approval workflow, Sean first logs into Business Central as Alicia, and then requests approval of a purchase order. Sean then logs in as himself, sees the note on his Role Center, follows the link to the approval request for the purchase order, and approves the request.
Before you can set up approval users and their notification method, you must make sure that two users exist in Business Central : One user will represent Alicia. The other user, yourself, will represent Sean. For more information, see Managing Users and Permissions.
When logged in as yourself, set Alicia up as an approval user whose approver is yourself. Set up your approval rights and specify how and when you are notified of approval requests.
icon, enter Approval User Setup, and then choose the related link. On the Approval User Setup page, choose the New action.
You must set up an approver before you can set up users who require that approver's approval. Therefore, you must set up yourself before you set up Alicia.
Set up the two approval users by filling the fields as described in the following table.
| User ID | Approver ID | Unlimited Purchase Approval |
|---|---|---|
| YOU | Selected | |
| ALICIA | YOU |
In this walkthrough, the user is notified by internal note about requests to approve. Approval notification can also be by email. For more information, see Specify When and How to Receive Notifications.
Create the purchase order approval workflow by copying the steps from the Purchase Order Approval Workflow workflow template. Leave the existing workflow steps unchanged, and then enable the workflow.
icon, enter Workflows, and then choose the related link. On the Workflow Templates page, select the workflow template named Purchase Order Approval Workflow, and then choose the OK button.
The Workflow page opens for a new workflow containing all the information of the selected template. The value in the Code field is extended with “-01” to indicate that this is the first workflow that is created from the Purchase Order Approval Workflow workflow template.
Use the new Purchase Order Approval Workflow workflow by first logging into Business Central as Alicia to request approval of a purchase order. Then log in as yourself, view the note on the Role Center, follow the link to the approval request, and then approve the request.
icon, enter Purchase Orders, and then choose the related link. Notice that the value in the Status field has changed to Pending Approval.
On the Requests to Approve page, choose the Approve action.
The value in the Status field on Alicia’s purchase order changes to Released.
You have now set up and tested a simple approval workflow based on the first two steps of the Purchase Order Approval Workflow workflow. You can easily extend this workflow to automatically post Alicia’s purchase order when Sean approves it. To do this, you must enable the Purchase Invoice Workflow workflow, in which the response to a released purchase invoice is to post it. First you must change the event condition on the first workflow step from (purchase) Invoice to Order.
The generic version of Business Central includes a number of workflow templates for scenarios that are supported by the application code. Most of these are for approval workflows.
You define variations of workflows by filling fields on workflow lines from fixed lists of event and response values representing scenarios that are supported by the application code. For more information, see Create Workflows.
If a business scenario requires a workflow event or response that is not supported, a Microsoft partner must implement them by customizing the application code. For more information, see Walkthrough: Implementing New Workflow Events and Responses in the developer and IT-pro help.
Set Up Approval Users
Setting Up Workflow Notifications
Create Workflows
Use Approval Workflows
Workflow
Using Business Central in an Automated Workflow
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