Hierarchy-based assignment work flow in ax 2009

Hierarchy-based assignment

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You can assign tasks and approval steps to employees in an organizational hierarchy. The following information will help you set up a hierarchy and assign tasks and approval steps to employees in the hierarchy.

Set up an organization hierarchy

To set up an organizational hierarchy, you must set up employees, jobs, and positions. For more information, see the Human Resources setup information in the Applications and Business Processes help, which is available from the Microsoft Dynamics AX help menu.

Set up approval and spending limits

You can set up approval limits and spending limits, and assign a task or approval step to employees based on these limits. Complete the following procedures to set up approval and spending limits.

Create a limit type

A limit type is an approval limit or spending limit associated with a specific document type. For example, you can create an approval limit for purchase requisitions, or a spending limit for expense reports.

Use the following procedure to create a limit type.

1. Open the Limit types form (Basic > Setup > Limit types).
2. Press CTRL+N to create a new line.
3. In the Limit ID field, enter an identification code for the limit. For example, if you are creating an approval limit for purchase requisitions, you may want the limit ID to be PurchApprovalLimit.
   The limit ID cannot contain any spaces.
4. In the Limit type field, select Approval limit or Spending limit.
5. In the Document type field, select the type of document this limit type applies to.
6. In the Description field, enter a description of the limit, such as Purchase requisition approval limit.
7. Save your changes.

Specify a default limit amount for each job

Specify a default limit amount for employees in each job. For example, by default, you may not want purchasing clerks to approve purchase requisitions that are greater than $500. You may not want purchasing managers to approve purchase requisitions that are greater than $5,000.

Use the following procedure to specify a default limit amount for a job.

1. Open the Jobs form (Basic > Setup > Job).
2. Select a job and click Setup > Limit defaults. The Limit defaults form is displayed.
3. Press CTRL+N to create a new line.
4. In the Limit ID field, select a limit type.
5. In the Default limit field, enter the default amount employees in the selected job can approve or spend (depending on the limit type you selected in the previous step).
6. In the Currency field, select the currency associated with the amount.
7. In the Active date field, enter the date that this default limit amount should go into affect.
8. In the Expiration date field, enter the date that this default limit amount should expire.
9. Save your changes.
10. Repeat this procedure for each job.

Specify a limit amount for each employee

Specify a limit amount for each employee. The amount you enter during this procedure will override the amount that you entered in the previous procedure.

For example, by default, you may not want purchasing managers to approve purchase requisitions that are greater than $5,000. However, you want Inga, a senior purchasing manager, to be able to approve purchase requisitions up to $10,000.

Use the following procedure to specify a limit amount for an employee.

1. Open the Employee form (Basic > Common Forms > Employee Details).
2. Select an employee and click Setup > Limits. The Limits form is displayed.
3. Press CTRL+N to create a new line.
4. In the Limit ID field, select a limit type.
5. In the Limit field, enter the amount the selected employee can approve or spend (depending on the limit type you selected in the previous step).
6. In the Currency field, select the currency associated with the amount.
7. In the Active date field, enter the date that this limit amount should go into affect.
8. In the Expiration date field, enter the date that this limit amount should expire.
9. Select the Active check box.
10. Save your changes.
11. Repeat this procedure for each employee.

Set the hierarchy-based assignment options

You can assign a task or approval step to employees in an organization hierarchy. To understand hierarchy-based assignment, assume that you have the following hierarchy.

Name	Job	Approval limit
Ann	CEO	$20,000
Mark	Corporate President	$10,000
Bill	Corporate Vice President	$5,000
Liz	Regional Manager	$1,000
Kevin	Sales Manager	$500
Sam	Salesperson	$100

Suppose that you want to assign a purchase requisition approval step to users in this hierarchy. To do so, you would need to complete the following procedure.

1. Open the Assignment form. For information about how to open this form, see Configure an approval step.
2. Select the Hierarchy based option.
3. The system must retrieve a range of employee names from the hierarchy. These names represent employees the approval step may possibly be assigned to.
   In order for the system to retrieve a range of names, you need to specify the starting point and ending point of the range.
   • To specify the starting point, select a person from the Start from list.
     Since you are configuring a purchase requisition approval step in this example, you can select Requisitioner. (This is a purchase requisition field that contains an employee name.)
     The system will determine who submitted the purchase requisition. Assume that Sam submitted the purchase requisition. This means that the system will start retrieving the employee names that are above Sam in the hierarchy.
   • To specify the ending point, click Create stop condition.
     The Workflow condition editor form is displayed. Enter a condition to indicate where in the hierarchy the system should stop retrieving names.
     For example, if you want the system to stop at Liz's name, you could enter the following condition: Line manager level = 2. (This is because Liz is Sam's second-level manger.)
     If you want the system to stop at Bill's name, you could enter: Job title is Corporate Vice President.
     If you want the system to stop at Mark's name, you could enter: Approval limit = 10,000.
4. Now that the system has retrieved a range of employee names from the hierarchy, you need to specify which employees the approval step will be assigned to.
   • If you select Assign to all users retrieved, the approval step will be assigned to all employees in the range.
   • If you select Assign only to last user retrieved, the approval step will be assigned to only the last employee in the range.
   • If you select Do not assign to users that meet the following condition, the system will not assign the approval step to users in the range who meet a specific condition. Click Create condition to specify the condition.
5. Click OK.