U-LINC Batch Approvals

One often asked question is, "Can I do batch approvals with U-LINC?"  The simple answer is yes, but the devil is always in the details.  This approach applies to any transaction type, RM, PM, GL, etc.  Conceptually, the user wants to create a transaction, and then force the system to go through an approval process for the batch that it is saved to.  That being said, the workflow is actually on the batch header record, but it is initiated when a transaction is created.

So, what we do is setup two U-LINC integrations.  The first integration is on the batch header table.  We then put an approval process workflow on the supporting list for this integration.
 
We then create a second integration on the transaction open table and create a workflow on the second list that starts the workflow on the batch header list item.  There are a couple ways to do this.  One way would be to use the "Start Another Workflow" action in the http://spdactivities.codeplex.com/ project.  This is a free CodePlex project that will give you some really useful workflow actions.  Secondly, we could add a column to our batch header list called "Workflow Status".  The transaction workflow could then set the value of this field to "In Process".  The batch header workflow would fire because the record was changed and the approval process would kick off.  The last step of the batch workflow would be to set the "Workflow Status" to "Completed".

Like I stated before, this is a generic answer for any type of batch approval process.  Remember, the great thing about U-LINC is that it is only limited by your imagination!

Until next time ...