Form to review the responses to a request
AP:Signature form
Fields on the AP:Signature form
Field | Description |
|---|---|
Approval ID | The AR System populates this field with the ID for this request. |
Approvers | The AR System populates this field with the name of the approver for this signature line. A maximum of 4000 characters are allowed in this field. The characters are truncated if this limit exceeds. |
More Information | The AR System populates this field with the questions and answers to More Information Requests. |
Approval Status | The AR System populates this field with the status of the request. For more information about Approval Status, see Checking-status-of-requests and Working-with-Approval-Status-and-More-Information-requests. |
Next Approver | The AR System populates this field in an ad hoc situation with the name of the next approver. |
If Multiple Approvers | This field is valid only if multiple entries exist in the Next Approver field. Select one of the options:
|
Alternate Signature | The AR System populates this field with the username of an alternate approver, if the alternate approver acts on the request. |
Approver Signature | The AR System populates this field with the username of the approver when the approver acts on the request. |
Signature Method | The AR System populates this field with the method by which this request was approved.
|
Assignee Group Permissions | The AR System populates this field with the Assignee Group for the request. This field supports the multi-tenancy feature. |
Full Name | Used to store the full names of approvers to whom the corresponding request is assigned. |
Role ID | Used to make a signature role aware. For more information, see Creating-signature-escalations-in-a-process. |
The Approval Server automatically drops duplicate signature lines if an approver appears in multiple groups to which a request is assigned or if there are duplicate individual mappings.
In such an event, entries such as the following are recorded in the approval log:
<APPR> Expanding roles for approver(s): SGP000000000082|CAB-Member
<APPR> Expanding roles for approver(s): SGP000000000084|CAB-Member
APPR> Dropping duplicate approver line for USER1;USER2;USER3;
<APPR> Dropping duplicate approver line for USER1;USER2;USER3;
You can safely ignore such log entries. The signature lines are dropped because the Approval Server maintains only one signature line for an approver per request until the associated process is active.
Full Name
The Approval Server uses the login name to search for the corresponding full name when creating a signature entry. It first searches the User forms, and if full name information is not present, it searches the custom form specified on the AP:Process Definition form. This information is stored in the Full Name character field (14201). For more information, see Form-to-create-and-modify-approval-processes.
If there is no custom Full Name Form, or if the full name information is not found through this form, the login name is used as default.
Setting the full name on a signature line is a one-time activity; this value is not set at run time. The full name provided at the time of signature line creation stays constant. If the Full Name value must be set dynamically, application developers must write the appropriate escalations. Applications can fetch user information from different forms, such as the User form, the CTM:People form, and so on.
Role ID
If a signature is created by expanding a role, the Role ID character field (14200) stores the role ID of the source role, which was expanded to create the individual signature line. The following situations could occur:
- If a role has One Must Sign set to true, only one signature entry is created for all the members belonging to the role. The related role ID is copied to the Role ID character field.
- If a role has All Must Sign set to true, the role ID is copied to each signature entry that is created by expanding the role.
Depending on the process definition, the signature entries are created as follows:
- When One Must Sign is defined at the process level, only one signature entry is created, regardless of the If Multiple Approvers setting at the role level. In this case, the individuals defined as approvers and the individuals expanded from the roles provided as approvers appear in a single signature entry. Role IDs for all the roles in the approvers list are put in the newly added field on the AP:Signature form for the corresponding signature.
- When All Must Sign is defined at the process level, multiple signatures are created according to the If Multiple Approvers setting at the role level. In this case, each signature entry contains the role ID that was responsible for creating the entry by expanding the individuals in the role.
The values in the Role ID field could differ as follows:
- The Role ID field remains blank for individuals in the approvers list.
- The Role ID field can have a single role ID or multiple roles IDs based on the definitions. All role IDs are enclosed between semicolons.
- Consider a case where a role is defined as an approver, which in turn is composed of roles. When this is expanded recursively to write individuals in the signature entry, the Role ID field has the role ID of the base role that was provided as the approver.
For example: The Finance role contains the users Jim and Frank. The Purchase role contains the users Paul and Bob. The Administrator role is a superset of Finance, Purchase, and a few more roles. When the Administrator role is defined as an approver for a request, even though it expands the Finance, Purchase, and other roles recursively to get individual approvers, the Role ID fields of the signatures created for these approvers contains the role ID of the Administrator role.