Item Unit Price Change Approval Workflow in NAV 2017

Item Unit Price Change Approval Workflow in NAV 2017

Hi All,

    Today, I came with amazing article in NAV 2017 i.e. Setup workflow using Wizard.

First of all, I would like to say thanks to NAV developers to add the amazing workflow templates.

The new templates are:   

Ø Vendor Approval Workflow.

Ø Item Approval Workflow.

Ø Item Unit Price Change Approval Workflow.

See the bellow screenshot for better understanding.

For Custom Workflow Click Me.

Walkthrough: Implementing Workflow Events and Responses

Introduction

Microsoft Dynamics NAV Workflows enable you to model real-life business processes like best practices or industry-standard practices. Ensuring a customer’s credit limit has been independently verified or requiring a two-person approval for a significant vendor payment are both examples of these.  Workflow can be thought of as the movement of documents or tasks through a work process. Workflows in Dynamics NAV focus on three main building blocks and almost any workflow process, short or long, is likely to be comprised of steps related to these three blocks.  They are:

·         Approval, approval leaves a work task, item or document in an blocked or unapproved state until approved by a suitable person in your organization

·         Notification, notifications tell users that something has happened and/or that they need to take some kind of action

·         Process automation, process automation means executing a process routine and have the Dynamics NAV system calculate something or perform an action

The workflows in Dynamics NAV are represented by Workflow Events and Responses.  The smallest workflow is the pairing of a single Event and a Response.  Simple workflows could be

·         When a new customer is created, email the sales person responsible for that region to alert them to the new customer.

·         When a new vendor is created, email the purchaser person responsible for that region to alert them to the new vendor.

·         When a purchase invoice exceeds $250, email the financial controller to alert them

More complex workflows are built of chains of events and responses.  Examples could be

·         When a Purchase Invoice exceeds $250, put the purchase invoice on hold until it is approved by a manager.

·         When new customers are created, block them until they have had a credit check performed.

·         Once a purchase document has been approved by the accounting manager, automatically post it to the Dynamics NAV system.

Note: in all the examples above, you can see a “when something happens, do something” pattern.  This is the “Event and Response” model and is the simple but effective design behind Dynamics NAV workflows.

Events and Workflow Events

Perhaps confusingly, Dynamics NAV 2016 introduces two new event concepts.  Events and Workflow events.  The two are distinct but often coupled together to build solutions.  Dynamics NAV Events allow you to write code which will be called when an event occurs – this is called subscribing to an event.  An example could be to subscribe to the OnCreate trigger for a table and writing code which will be called whenever a new record is created.

Workflow Events typically use Platform Events as their trigger, but are richer.  Workflow events are registered in the workflow engine and show up in the workflow designer.  Microsoft recommends that Workflow events be written at a higher level of abstraction than Platform Events, for example while OnCreateNewCustomerRecord makes a suitable platform event, a good workflow event could be AfterOverduePaymentIsPosted.

Scenarios

Demo 1 - Enable the workflow & response in the NAV system

The scenario of this part of the demo script is to show managing workflow events & responses from a Dynamics NAV system to build a workflow.  This task is typically performed by super users.

AIM:    Create an Item Unit Price Change Approval Workflow.

Demo 1 — Enable the workflow event in the NAV system

Managing workflow events from a Dynamics NAV system.

An entire workflow is comprised of binding a Workflow Event and a Response together and then enabling it.

This Setup can be done from Workflows, or Workflows Templates, Item List….

In My demo, I used Item List page to create Item Unit Price Change Approval Workflow.

Follow the bellow steps to achieve.

Ø  Open the web client, Navigate the Item List Page, Click on Action Tab, Click on Workflow dropdown Menu and then click on Create Approval Workflow.

Ø  ITEM APPROVAL WORKFLOW SETUP page will display, See the bellow screenshot.

Ø  Click on NEXT button, and follow the wizard.

Ø  And choose the Approver user ID.

Ø  Choose when the workflow start.

See the bellow screenshot for better understanding.

Ø  Click on NEXT button, and follow the wizard.

Ø  And choose the Item Table Field.

Ø  Choose when the workflow start.

Ø  Specify the message to display when the workflow starts.

See the bellow screenshot for better understanding.

Ø  Click on NEXT button, you will get final wizard then click on finish button.

See the bellow screenshot for better understanding.

Testing Workflow

Ø  Open the Web client with different User ID for better response.

Ø  Navigate the Item List page, Select the Item 1000, Edit this Item and change the Unit price 4000 to 4050.

Ø  Once you made changes you will get a notification like: The item unit price change was sent for approval.

Ø  Click on OK button.

See the bellow screenshot.

Ø  Now login with Approver User ID, you will get an Approval Request, See the Approvals Cue.

Ø  Click on Approvals Cue box, you will get a REQUESTS TO APPROVE page, now you can approve, Reject, Delegate, Open Record….  See the bellow screenshot.