Question

Service Catalogue item approval by Cost Centres

  • 21 April 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 247 views

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Hi All,

I’m part of a small team developing our new FreshService system and having issues creating a workflow that produces the following scenario and would be ecstatic if I could get some support on this:

We want to setup our approval structure in a way that when a user requests a service item(e.g. a CAD 15” Laptop), they are presented with a prompt field that asks for that requester’s cost centre in order to send their department cost centre owner an approval email. 

The idea behind this, would be such that if a user in the Finance department for example requests the CAD 15” Laptop service item, this item cost will come from the Finance cost centre/budget rather than the IT budget. 

With the below configuration, I’m not getting approval emails sent through to the cost centre owners at all.

Things tried so far

  • Created “Cost Centre Approval” Custom Object - Text field with records for each individual cost centre# and a lookup field referencing each approver email address for approval.

 

 

  • Created a “CAD 15” Laptop Service” catalogue item - Added a cost centre drop down that references data source: “Cost Centre Approval”.

Any Suggestions or support on the below configuration and what I’m missing would be greatly appreciated. As mentioned, I cant deviate from the desired setup of service items requiring cost centre approvals.

Many Thanks,

Danthebugg


4 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +16

Hello @Danthebugg This all looks really good. My thought is that you when you use the value returned from the reader node, the format you are getting from the approver column is incorrect. Meaning it’s carrying the name and email address, for example “Zachary King - zachking@test.com”, when the “Send approval mail to” action node wants just an email address. If you were to change that field in your custom object to be just an email address (for testing) does the workflow work and fire off the approval email? 

Just a thought I had! Hope this helps. Tagging @sanofar.allahpichai for some technical assistance.

Take care!

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Hello @Danthebugg This all looks really good. My thought is that you when you use the value returned from the reader node, the format you are getting from the approver column is incorrect. Meaning it’s carrying the name and email address, for example “Zachary King - zachking@test.com”, when the “Send approval mail to” action node wants just an email address. If you were to change that field in your custom object to be just an email address (for testing) does the workflow work and fire off the approval email? 

Just a thought I had! Hope this helps. Tagging @sanofar.allahpichai for some technical assistance.

Take care!

Good Afternoon Zach,

 

Firstly, thanks for your response and I really appreciate you’re support.

 

What you’ve suggested definitely makes sense in that the “send approval email to” node wants just an email address. The only issue is when i change that lookup node to a Text “column so I can email addresses, the send approval email node wont pickup or see the custom object as an option to reference anymore (R1 Read from cost centre approval). For the custom option to appear again in my approval node again, the workflow requires the custom object to include a lookup node: All users.

 

I saw an article that mentioned having a custom object with a lookup node, that references another object - Then sticking the email addresses in there, but I've still got no joy. See below setup:


 

Workflow - R1.cost centre approval not appearing

 

Userlevel 2
Badge +2

Hi @Danthebugg,

 

I have a workaround for this issue. Choosing fields from ticket fields and using it to filter the name in the Reader node doesn’t work now as it needs a lookup. Instead of it, you can use the “Insert Placeholder” option available and select the Cost Centre placeholder.

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This will send the approval mail as the reader node  will properly read the ticket field now and match the appropriate records and send the approval mail.


 

Cheers!

 

Aravindsrihari B V.

Userlevel 1
Badge +1

I had the same issue and the insert place holder (mentioned above) fixed my issue. I hope it works for you too!

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