Associating an action date for a process or signature

Each Approval Server process and signature can be associated with an action date. The action date helps approvers know in advance the duration within which to take action on requests assigned to them. Process administrators can use this value to determine whether a process is on track or needs intervention (automatic or manual). This information helps in addressing requests and driving them to completion on time. The action date is based on the Automatic Action interval defined for a process. For more information, see Approval-Central.

The action date is calculated by using the following fields on the tabs of AP:Process Definition:

  • Configuration—Process Due, Signature Due, Buffer Period, and Enable Preview
  • Signature Escalations—Automatic Action and Notification (First) intervals

Related topics

Managing-signatures-for-multiple-approvers

Creating-signature-escalations-in-a-process

Applications can override the Process Due interval by directly passing the desired Process Due Date as a parameter of the New-Details command. For more information, see Process-commands.

The action dates for processes and signatures are stored in the following fields:

  • Process Due Date (ID 11000) on AP:Detail
  • Signature Due Date (ID 12000) on AP:Signature

Important

Using Enable Preview to determine the action date might increase the processing time for a new request due to the steps required to retrieve the list of future approvers.

When working with notifications and escalations, make sure to enable the appropriate notification and escalation types on AP:Admin-ServerSettings.

How the action date for a Parent-Child or Level process is calculated

When the first signature is created for a request, the Process Due Date is either derived from the Process Due period defined on AP:Process Definition, or set to the value sent by the application through New-Details. If the application specifies the Process Due Date value, the value in the Process Due field is ignored.

If Enable Preview is set to Yes, the total number of approvals in the process is calculated by fetching the future approvers with the help of the Preview feature. The effective Signature Due period is calculated as follows:

signatureDue = (Process Due /  <totalNumberOfApprovals>)

This value is then compared with the one specified in the Signature Due field, and the minimum of the two is used.

effectiveSigntaureDue = MIN (Signature Due, signatureDue)

If no value is entered in the Signature Due field, the derived signatureDue is used for further computation.

The action date for a signature is calculated as follows:

Action Date = MIN (effectiveSignatureDue,
   Automatic Action interval-Buffer Period,
   Escalation interval-Buffer Period)

For more information, see Creating-signature-escalations-in-a-process.

How the action date for an Ad Hoc process is calculated

When the first signature is created for a request, the Process Due Date is either derived from the Process Due period defined on AP:Process Definition, or set to the value sent by the application through New-Details. If the application specifies the Process Due Date value, the value in the Process Due field is ignored.

The value of Enable Preview is ignored because the ad hoc nature of the process makes it impossible to identify the future approvers.

The action date for a signature is calculated as follows:

Action Date = MIN (Signature Due,
   Process Due date-Buffer Period,
   Automatic Action interval-Buffer Period,
   Escalation interval-Buffer Period)

For more information, see Creating-signature-escalations-in-a-process.


 

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