BPM Approval Process in Oracle fusion procurement is one of the key functionalities which every one need to know .This is required to configure your PO and PR document approval in a very flexible way
Approval Tools in BPM Approval Process
Below are the various approval tools which help in executing the Procurement approval process
Oracle SOA Approval Management extensions (AMX)
AMX is the tool which performs task routing rules for your business documents.
Oracle Business Process Management (BPM)
BPM is a web-based application that lets users access tasks and perform actions
Oracle Procurement Approval Rules Management (PRC)
Procurement approval actually Set up and manage approval rules to your business documents as per given condition
Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM)
HCM is responsible to drive and use the manpower to take action on complete approval process. For example it derive the supervisory and position hierarchy based approvers.
Key Components of BPM Approval Process
Below diagram tells the hierarchical organization of elements of approval management.
It starts with document Approval Request Task comprising Task configuration, Stage comprising dimension,
Participant comprising Routing and Voting Regime, and Rule comprising Response Type, Action and
Condition
Stage
A stage allows you to organize approval routing rules into logical groupings.
Each stage is associated with a dimension. A dimension contains a set of attributes at a specific purchasing document level, such as header or lines, which can be used to author routing rules.
Approval actions within each stage must be completed before entering the next stage
Check BPM Approval process video Demo here
Approval Stage
Participant
Within a stage there can be multiple participants. There can be serial or parallel participant based on Properties set on the participants .
Approvals are routed in serial or in parallel based on the properties
Oracle Procurement Cloud is seeded with one or more participants within each stage to enable flexibility
in document approvals routing.
The following are two properties defined on a participant:
• Routing Type: The supported routing types are: Serial, Parallel, and FYI. FYI participants cannot
directly impact the outcome of a task, but in some cases, can provide comments or add attachments.
• Voting Regime: The supported voting regimes are: Serial, Consensus, and First Responder
Wins.
Approval Rules
Approval rules are routing policies or rules that determine the approvers or FYI recipients for a business
transaction.
Condition: Condition is the IF clauses in an approval rule and evaluated to either true or false.
For the rule to apply to a transaction, all of its conditions must be true. An example of a condition is: If requisition approval amount is less than 600 USD, or if requisition approval amount is between 600 USD and
10000 USD.
Action: Instruction to include a given set of approvers within an approval rule.
Hierarchies and Job Levels
The diagrams depict sample hierarchies and job levels.
An employee supervisor hierarchy ranges from Casey Brown (Director) to Mary Walton (Administrative Assistant).
A position hierarchy ranges from General Manager down to Store Manager.
Job levels range from Director Job Level 3, to Assistant, Job Level 1.
Employee Supervisor Hierarchy
Approvals can be configures based the employee supervisory hierarchy, which is defined in Oracle
Human Capital Management Cloud up to a certain number of levels as per business requirement and approval policy.
Employees must be set up with appropriate jobs and supervisors.
Position Hierarchy
Approval can be setup based on position Hierarchy. The BPM can choose to route document approvals to navigate the position hierarchy defined in Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud, until a specified job level is reached.
The position hierarchy must be defined along with corresponding job levels, and the employees must be assigned the appropriate positions.
Job Levels
Job-level routings are based on the supervisory hierarchy defined in Oracle Human Capital Management
Cloud.
The approval list will be generated based on the starting person specified in a rule and continuing
until an approver with a sufficient job level is found. The supervisory hierarchy must be defined along with
the corresponding job levels.
