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Managing Stalled Workflows
rahulpal
Participant
2022 Sep 04 1:03 PM
11 Kudos 4,159
SAP Managed Tags: SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, SAP Workflow Management, workflow capability
Hello Everyone,
In this fast-moving corporate culture, every business wants their internal processes should be fast and in motion. Any
stoppage or stalled operation not only effects the efficiency of process but also hampers its employee proactivity.
Today I would express my experience on one of such hindrance in our HR process that our employees, especially manager
faces due to their dynamic work responsibilities.
Problem Statement:
In a dynamic work environment, apart from people management a manager must perform various other activities in their
domain. In some scenarios if they belong to sales or production department their most of the time goes in offline activities
and they hardly login to their devices to perform HR operation related activities in SuccessFactors.
Due to this the number of stalled workflow numbers are getting increased in organization and HR’s need to manually track
and push manager or HRIS to complete/approve these workflows.
Proposed Solution.
After getting this problem statement, I have investigated on the options and tried to find out if there is a way to
cancel/decline a workflow if it is not approved until certain days. Unfortunately, SAP does not have this mechanism
available for their customers. I have proposed this enhancement to SAP and if you feel it is a good idea then request you to
please vote on the SAP’s Customer Influence site (Idea # 280632)
Coming back to problem statement, I have summarized here other available options through which we can manage the
stalled workflow issues in our organization.
1. Sending Reminder
2. Auto Approving the workflow
3. Escalating pending workflow to next level
Let’s discuss all these options in detail
Sending Reminder
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With past release SuccessFactors has given option to send recurring reminders to the current approver if no action has
been taken on the workflow till a certain day. Enabling this option will send recurring reminders to current approver on a
specific interval defined on workflow or on schedule job until there is any action on the workflow by current approver. This
action can be anything apart from approving the workflow – eg – just adding a comment.
Pic 1: Example of a workflow with Remind in Days Option
Let’s understand this with an example –
Suppose for a leave of absence workflow you have set a reminder of 2 days by updating the field “Remind in days” as 2.
Here, if there has been no action taken by the approver in last two days from initiating the workflow, SF will send an
automated email to current approver to approve the workflow on day 2. Suppose the approver did not take any action &
ignore the email, SF will send another reminder on Day 4 and so on Day 6, Day 8, Day 10….
Now assume approver on getting the first reminder instead of approving the request, just add a comment on workflow and
close it in this case, system will wait for another 2 days from the date workflow has been modified to send fresh reminders
to current approver.
How to Configure
To enable “Remind in Days” field, you need to enable hris-field “remind-indays” in the corporate data model.
Admin Center - > Import/Export Corporate Data Model.
Export the data model template, open it with a text editor & update template. Below is an example of code that can be
updated.
</hris-field>
<hris-field id=”remind-indays” visibility=”both”>
<label>Remind In Days</label>
<label xml:lang=en-GB”>Remind In Days</label>
</hris-field>
If you don’t have access to corporate data model, please get in touch with your implementation partner to update the
template.
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Pic 2: Adding Remind in Days field in XML
Once Remind in Day field setup for your workflow is completed, you need to schedule a daily job (Job Type – Workflow
Action Reminder) under provisioning to execute the reminder for the concern recipients.
Pic 3: Job needed to run Remind in Days notification
Note: You have an option of setting the frequency of reminder both on workflow as well as on the Job and can be used
based on your requirement as –
If you want to send reminder based on workflows, then you need to update “Remind in Days field” on workflow and
keep “remind in days” field under job parameters blank
If you want to maintain standard reminder frequency for all kind of workflow, then you need to update” Remind in
Days” field under job parameter and keep “Remind in days” field on workflow blank.
If “Remind in days” filed has been updated on both workflow and on Job parameter, system will prefer the value
updated on the background job.
Auto Approving the workflow
Another solution SuccessFactors offer to its client is to auto approve a workflow if it has been stalled for a certain date. This
can be achieved by adding “Days until Auto Approval” field on your workflow configuration page.
Pic 4: Example of workflow with Auto Approval Workflow option
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How to Configure
To enable “Days until Auto Approval” field, you need to enable “autoApproveInDay” in the corporate data model.
Admin Center - > Import/Export Corporate Data Model.
Export the data model template, open it with a text editor & update template. Below is an example of code that can be
updated.
</hris-element id=”wfstepApprover”>
<hris-field id=”autoApproveInDay” visibility=”both”>
<label> Days until Auto Approval </label>
</hris-field>
Pic 5: Adding workflow auto approval field in XML
If you don’t have access to corporate data model, please get in touch with your implementation partner to update the
template.
Once Days until Auto Approval is setup for your workflow is completed, you need to schedule a daily job (Job Type –
Workflow Auto Approval) under provisioning to execute the auto approval feature for respective workflows.
Pic 6: Job needed for workflow auto approval notification
Automatic Workflow Escalation
With the past release SAP has given option to automatically escalate the workflow to a specific user if that workflow has
been stalled for the specific number of days. The escalation receiver then become the new approver and the workflow sit in
his/her To-Do list. The new approver can work offline with original approver to approve the workflow.
If new approver wants it to get approved by original approver in that case new approver can decline or send back the
escalation so that workflow start reflecting under original approver’s To-Do list.
You can create multistep escalation so that if first escalation approver does not take action to certain date, it can be
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escalated to next step/person.
How to Configure
To enable auto escalation, you need to first enable Escalation field on the workflow.
Admin Center - > Import/Export Corporate Data Model.
Export the data model template, open it with a text editor & update template. Below is an example of code that can be
updated.
</hris-field>
<hris-field id=”escalation” visibility=”both”>
<label> Escalation</label>
</hris-field>
Pic 7: Adding Auto Escalation field in XML
If you don’t have access to corporate data model, please get in touch with your implementation partner to update the
template.
Once the field is enabled next step is to create an escalation path in EC.
Admin Center -> Manage Data -> Create New -> Escalation
Pic 8: Example of Auto Escalation Path
Escalation step can be defined as follows –
escalationRouteForm – It’s the starting point of the escalation. It can be anyone of these –
Current Approver – with whom the workflow is currently pending for approval
Original Approver – the actual approver of the workflow
Subject Employee – Employee on whom workflow needs to be approved
Initiator – the workflow approver
Target Value – To whom workflow needs to be escalated. It can be manager, manager’s manager, or HR
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Escalation After Days – No of days after which system trigger escalation notification if no action is taken on the workflow.
Add this escalation path to the “Escalation” field enabled on workflow configuration page.
Pic 9: Example of Auto Escalation Workflow Setup
Once the workflow setup is completed navigate to Admin Center - > e-mail notification template setting and look for below
three email templates. You need to open each template and save them by clicking “save changes”. This is an important step
as these templates are automatically deployed and need to be saved for the first time to make it default template. If this
step is missed notification will not get triggered.
Workflow Action Escalate Notification
Workflow Action Escalate Revoke Notification
Workflow Action Escalate Decline Notification
Pic 10: Email notifications
Next Step needs to be created a background job (Job Type – Workflow Auto Escalation) under provisioning to execute
escalation notifications.
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Pic 11: Job needed for auto escalation notification
Note: Two reminders cannot be running togethers, make them dependent of it.
To Conclude:
These are very simple configuration which can help the organizations to manage their manager’s workload. With the help of
these options, we have reduced significant number of stalled workflows in our organization and that is the reason I got
motivated to share this experience with you all. Please do share your comment and feedback.
Please follow rahul_pal for more contents on issues & topics related to SuccessFactors modules. You can also click here to
post your questions on SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and read other blogs on Employee Central by clicking here
4 Comments
former_member36698
Explorer
2022 Oct 12 8:13 AM
0 Kudos
Hi Rahul,
You have explained nicely on Managing stalled workflows, but is it possible if the employee HR is on leave, then the
workflow should go to the next step for approval otherwise it should be with only HR.
Regards
Ashish
rahulpal
Participant
2022 Oct 13 10:57 AM
0 Kudos
Hi Ashish,
We are achieving this objective via "workflow escalation". If you don't want to setup this, you can use delegate workflow
feature which has been introduced with this year H1 release where a person can delegate his/her workflows for the time
period employee is on leave.
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Regards,
Rahul
DRP07
Explorer
2024 May 22 6:18 AM
0 Kudos
@rahulpal Thank you for the info!
I have a doubt. If in the WF, I have Remind in Days (lets say set as 2) and then a Escalation path with first step escalation
period as 10, then I believe after 5 reminders (to the original approver), only then the WF will be escalated to the new
approver (let's say X). Do I understand this correct?
Also, once escalated, what happens to the Remind in Days in the WF? Will this still be respected? If X has not responded in
the next few days, will he continue to get reminders as per the Remind in Days = 2;
Also, the Escalation After days, will this count from the start of the initiation of the workflow or from the last escalation?
Thanks in advance.
Prathima9
Discoverer
a week ago
0 Kudos
@rahulpal Thanks for detail description of how to manage stalled workflows.
I want to know about Sent back workflows, for sent back workflows initiator gets 3 options 'Resubmit', 'Update' and
'Withdraw'. Is there any process in set up if no further action taken by initiator after x number of days, system should
automatically cancel this request.
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