- \n
- Manager must approve,<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
- Entitlement is created with Training set to “Requested”,\n
- \n
- Workflow triggers to update Training to “Done”,\n
- \n
- Trainer must approve,<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
- Entitlement now active with Training=”Done”.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Before R2 that “Trainer must approver” step wasn’t possible, at least not without some externally-triggered PowerShell trickery<\/a>. Now we can do it, but you will have to write a custom activity to do your equivalent of my step 2a above.<\/p>\n
Custom Update Activity<\/h2>\n
To demonstrate this functionality I wrote a very simple\u00c2\u00a0activity that uses\u00c2\u00a0the UpdateResourceActivity to set a value.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/CustomUpdate.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\u00c2\u00a0There is only one code activity and then the UpdateResourceActivity.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/R2-WF.jpg\")
<\/p>\nHere’s the code activity:<\/p>\n
Private Sub InitializeUpdateActivity_ExecuteCode(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)\r\n '' Get containing Workflow\r\n Dim containingWorkflow As SequentialWorkflow = Nothing\r\n If Not SequentialWorkflow.TryGetContainingWorkflow(Me, containingWorkflow) Then\r\n Throw New InvalidOperationException(\"Could not get parent workflow!\")\r\n End If\r\n\r\n Me.updateResourceActivity1.UpdateParameters = New UpdateRequestParameter() {New UpdateRequestParameter(Me.Attribute, UpdateMode.Modify, Me.Value)}\r\n Me.updateResourceActivity1_ActorId1 = containingWorkflow.ActorId\r\n Me.updateResourceActivity1_ResourceId1 = containingWorkflow.TargetId\r\n\r\n If Me.AuthZAfterAction = True Then Me.updateResourceActivity1_ApplyAuthorizationPolicy1 = True\r\n\r\n End Sub<\/pre>\nThe important bit is setting the ApplyAuthorizationPolicy property to True.<\/p>\n
In case you want to see them here are links to the full Activity and UI code:<\/p>\n
- \n
- CustomUpdate.vb<\/a><\/li>\n
- CustomUpdateUI.vb<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Policy Objects to Create<\/h2>\n
Sets:<\/p>\n
- \n
- “Entitlements where Training is Requested”<\/li>\n
- “Entitlements where Training is Done”<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Workflow Definitions:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Action: “Set Training to Done”. Uses my CustomUpdate activity as pictured above, with “Allow Authorization” ticked.<\/li>\n
- AuthZ: “Get Trainer Approval”. Just a standard Approval activity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
MPR “Entitlement Workflow: Initiate training request”<\/p>\n
- \n
- Type = Transition In\u00c2\u00a0<\/li>\n
- Transition Set = “Entitlements where Training is Requested”<\/li>\n
- Action WF =\u00c2\u00a0“Set Training to Done”<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
MPR “Entitlement Workflow: Get trainer approval”:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Type = Request<\/li>\n
- Requestor = “All People”<\/li>\n
- Operation = Modify<\/li>\n
- Target before set =”Entitlements where Training is Requested”<\/li>\n
- Target after set = “Entitlements where Training is Done”<\/li>\n
- AuthZ WF = “Get Trainer Approval”<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The Results<\/h2>\n
To\u00c2\u00a0test\u00c2\u00a0that I really can have an approval after an action all I need do\u00c2\u00a0is edit an existing entitlement and set Training to “Requested”:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/R2-set-entitlement-to-requested.jpg\")
<\/p>\nLooking at the Requests log I can see that a couple of things have happened straight away:<\/p>\n
- \n
- My request to change the value to “Requested” is Post-Processing,<\/li>\n
- There is a new request to change the value to “Done” which is “Authorizing”, and<\/li>\n
- An approval has been created.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/R2-approval-triggered.jpg\")
<\/p>\nGoing back to check the entitlement – the expected value of “Requested” is the currently committed value.<\/p>\n
The approver responsible for saying when training is done just has to approve the pending request:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/R2-approve.jpg\")
<\/p>\nOnce that is complete the entitlement object now shows a correct training status of “Done”.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/R2-done.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
So there we have it<\/h2>\n
It looks like it is now possible to trigger an approval from a change being made by an action workflow.<\/p>\n
I still need to try out a few other things – like whether it makes any difference if the Sync Engine made the change – but so far it looks promising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
R2 introduced a new property to the UpdateResourceActivity, CreateResourceActivity and DeleteResourceActivity classes called “ApplyAuthorizationPolicyProperty”. Setting this to “true” in your custom activity allows an Authorization activity to be triggered by an Action workflow. I have finally had an opportunity to try this out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[60,30,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fim-2010-r2","category-vbnet","category-workflow"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkp1o-Ee","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2494"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2516,"href":"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494\/revisions\/2516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wapshere.com\/missmiis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- CustomUpdateUI.vb<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- CustomUpdate.vb<\/a><\/li>\n
- Workflow triggers to update Training to “Done”,\n