PeopleSoft AWE (Approval Workflow Engine) - Part 2

Let’s look at one of the AWE Example at higher level and see some of its setups.

Here’s an example of AWE process that comes delivered in the system. When a Time Reporter submits time, the time should be approved by this employee’s Supervisor; The Approval process is setup at Employee TL Workgroup level (not at TRC level).

For the above employee’s workgroup, system will be usin g the Approval Process ID of TLReportedTime (or the Approval Definition ID of TLBySupervisorID).

Also, In the demo system that I will be testing this AWE process, the Email Notification is turned off and only worklist is turned on as shown below :

What this mean is that, only worklists are triggerd when the approval s are routed and the Approver  has to go to the Worklist and pick up the approvals. If the Email Active was also selected, the email notification will also be sent to the Approver.  (there is also one more setup at AWE level for notifications and we assume that the delivered system uses both type of the notifications)

 So Lets Take a look at the Timesheet and submit Time :

If you look at the above screen shot, time is submitted for Friday 05/16 for 8 REG hours. This reported time needs approval;

If you look at the Approval Monitor Link, it looks as shown below :

It shows multiple Approvers. If you look at the Multiple Approvers link, it shows as below:

There are several approvers (17 of them) in the list ,which means that, anyone of the list can be approver and once it is approved, the time can be processed by Time Admin.

Now let’s dig into this AWE Setup and see how it is working and find the Process Flow:

AWE has the What, How, When & Who logic. When the Timesheet is submitted, this is the transaction and this is the “What” part of AWE.  So in AWE, we need to have a Transaction Registry Setup and this identifies how the calling application will interact with AWE;

Now comes the “How” Part which is handled by the Approval Process Definitions: The Approval Process Definition pages allow the functional analyst to define the workflow steps to be executed in order for the transaction to be approved. So with our example, we have KU0016 Employee (Time Reporter) time submission for 05/16 date, and how this should be approved; are there multiple approval levels or just a single level, is there a specific logic involved here? From our example, it is a simple single level approval and there are no multiple levels.

Next is the “When” Part.  There is an Approval Process Configuration page that allows the user to define events that trigger notifications. In our example, the Time Sheet submission should trigger the notification in the form of email or worklist or both.

The last part is the “Who” Part, i.e. who should approve or who would get the notification? This is the User list is which is generated by User Roles, SQL Definitions, PS/Query options and Application Packages. In our Example, we had a PS Query that fetches a list of users who can approve the transaction.

Let’s stop the Part – 2 here and continue with deeper diving in the Part – 3 of AWE. Hope you are following the steps so far. We will take a look at each of the above setups in the next part. See you later.

 

PeopleSoft AWE (Approval Workflow Engine) - Part 2

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PeopleSoft AWE (Approval Workflow Engine) - Part 1

I am trying to learn about AWE, as I am fairly new to this concept; there is a Red Paper on AWE which I would like to go through and understand some of its concepts. However, before that, I would like to setup some example to make it in a simplified fashion and understand it better.

PeopleSoft provides Red Papers for certain toolsets, which can be used as a practical guide to implement it (i.e. gives an overview and walks through the steps needed to build it.)

As per the Red Paper, you can use Standard Workflow   , which requires advanced technical skills in PeopleSoft PeopleTools to create and maintain or use AWE which is easier to create, configure, and maintain; there are some process within PeopleSoft HCM 9 and 9.1 which still use the Standard Workflow.

Instead of going and understanding the Red Paper, What I would like to do is, look at some delivered examples that uses AWE feature and work on similar example and then look at all different features of AWE and go back to the Red Paper; I want to act as a Functional user and I want to see how easy is it to use and setup AWE; But before that, let's try to understand some of the basic concepts of Workflow Process.

What is PeopleSoft Workflow or why it is used?

PeopleSoft Workflow can be defined as getting the right work to the right people at the right time;

PeopleSoft Workflow consists of a powerful set of tools that enables to automate time-consuming business processes and deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.

Some of the Workflow Terminology:

• Business Process
• Activities
• Steps
• Roles and Rules.

What is Business Process?

A Business Process includes all of the tasks (or activities) and people that are involved to complete a unit a work. Example would be Hire new employees or Order supplies. So if you look at Hire Business Process, they are numerous task within it such as entering employee info, enroll them in time and labor or benefits, getting emergency contact info or direct deposit info and other tasks.

What are Activities?

An Activity represents specific transaction that you might need to perform. It would consists of Steps that are used to perform a transaction Example would be entering Emergency Info of an Employee or Hire an Employee.

What are Steps?

Steps are the Individual actions that you perform on specific PeopleSoft Pages.

What are Rules?

Rules are your organization’s business practices captured in software. Rules determine when a business event triggers Workflow.

What are Roles?

Roles describe how people fit into the Workflow. A Role is a class of users who performs the same type of work, such as clerks or managers.

An example of business rule would be:

If a member requests leave and it is approved/denied by their supervisor then the member must be notified by email

What is the Approval Workflow Engine (AWE)?

The PeopleSoft Approval Framework is a specialized application used for defining and configuring approvals. Approval Framework enables you to configure approval processes using existing components without writing code; i.e. it uses a series of database objects combined with application component configuration settings to determine how to process approvals using workflow and it is delivered as part of the PeopleSoft Enterprise Components.

AWE is newer concept which comes with latest releases which is much easier to create, configure and maintain and older PeopleSoft Applications used traditional workflow process and some of the Challenges were:

• Requires development in Application Designer (creating Business Process, Activities, Steps and PeopleCode etc.)
• Not configurable online

 AWE can be configured online for different transactions; when user submits a transaction that has approval process, AWE comes into play and finds the appropriate approval process definition and launches the approval workflow.  

In next blog, we will go through an example from Time and Labor i.e. when user submits time which needs approval, and look at all the relevant AWE setups for this transaction.

PeopleSoft AWE (Approval Workflow Engine) - Part 1

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Important Tables in TAM

If you are working on a TAM project or have implemented Talent Acquisition Management in PeopleSoft , at times you may be required to query for different Applicant data; There are many tables in TAM and having to know the most important ones will always come in handy.

Below are the some important TAM Tables that would be used in queries. One thing to note, you will be required to join multiple tables if you are looking to get good amount of data the spans different information.

Table Name		Description
PS_HRS_APP_ADDRESS		Applicant Address
PS_HRS_APP_ANSWER		Applicant Answers to Questionaire
PS_HRS_APP_APLC_VW		Gives Applicant Info on what job applied - what date, status etc
PS_HRS_APP_EMAIL		Applcant Email Info
PS_HRS_APP_ITEMS		Profile Content Items in an Applicant's application.
PS_HRS_APP_JOPSCRN		Applicant Job Opening Screening Process
PS_HRS_APP_LOGIN		Applicant Career Site Login Info
PS_HRS_APP_NAMES		Applicant Names
PS_HRS_APP_PHONE		Applicant Phone info
PS_HRS_APP_PROFILE		Applicant Data..has HRS_PERSON_ID, APPLID, EMPLID
PS_HRS_APP_PSCRANS		Applicant screening info
PS_HRS_APP_PSCREEN		Applicant Prescreeing info
PS_HRS_APP_REF		Applicant References Information
PS_HRS_APP_RES		Applicant Resume
PS_HRS_APP_RTE		Applicant Routing
PS_HRS_APP_RTE_DTL		Applicant Routing Details
PS_HRS_APP_STS		Applicant Status
PS_HRS_APP_WRK_EXP		Applicant Work Exp
PS_HRS_APPLICANT		Applicant Details
PS_HRS_CONTACT		Company Contact Details
PS_HRS_INT_SCHED		Interview panel for an applicant
PS_HRS_JO_DSC_TYP		JO Posting Details
PS_HRS_JO_I		JO info - recruiter id, manager id, creator id--good info
PS_HRS_JO_PST_LIB		JO Posting Description Library
PS_HRS_JO_RCTR_RL		JO Recruiter Roles
PS_HRS_JOB_OPENING		JOB OPENING Details
PS_HRS_LOCATION		Interview Location Details
PS_HRS_OFFER		Offer Details
PS_HRS_RCM_INT		Interview timings for an applicant and other details
PS_HRS_RCMNT		Has Applicant Person ID and Job Opening (interface table)
PS_HRS_RCMNT_I		Has Applicant Person ID and Job Opening (interface table)
PS_HRS_STS_INT_I		Interview Status Details
PS_HRS_STS_JO_I		Status Codes , Details on a Job Opening
PS_HRS_STS_REC_I		Recruitment Status
PS_PT_WF_NOTFY_TBL		Info on for all notification emails sent from HRS REC

Important Tables in TAM

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