Ok Here is the situation:
This is the flow of work.
A document gets put into a document library. That’s when the workflow should start by sending an email to person 1. Person 1 signs the document (By using a third party signature product), SAVES it, whereby a second emaiil is sent out alerting person 2 there is a document waiting for them to reviewand or sign. Person 2 signs it an email gets sent to person 3, etc…..All the while this document is sitting in the document library being changed by being signed and saved. My problem is, once it is saved by every person, how do I let the workflow know to send it to the nexxt person? Do I use versioning? How do I kick this off? Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks in Advance..
Pat
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Drew, you must not have had experiene with government work :). LOL
You are totally correct and they know all of this. I am now looking for maybe a compound condition, maybe an “and” statement. In this case, a “rejection” doesnt stop the flow, they want to know that someone rejected it. The packet that will be dropped in the library cannot be changed, so the people I will have looking at this can only sign or review the document. SharePoint doesnt care whether someone signs the document, hence, I’m not worried about what goes on inside the document. I only want it to forward to the next victim. Which is why a wait clause based on “modified by” works so well.
Dude, why cant I have co-workers like you, you are the HEAT when it comes to SharePoint! Thanks for your help!!!
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The issue you may have with that approach is if they make a change to the document and they didn’t want to trigger the next approval it will still move automatically. Â This would also trigger if you have a rejection outcome possible.
Also with that approach you will be stuck updating the workflow when the approvers need to change. Â You could get the same result by having them enter the approvers on an initiation form and use that in the workflow instead of hard coding it.
You are correct Drew,
I think I may try the approach of using a wait clause triggered by the “modified by” column. It will wait until the next person in the movement changes the document, then send out an email to the next in line it’s their turn to look at it…working with it now. I will post screen shots if it works….
Pat
If you want to use SP designer you will need to have some trigger or identifier as a column in the list as Paul is leading too.Â
You could use workflow tasks that are generated to let the people know who need to approve the document and then complete the task after they have approved it in the 3rd party software. Â This would lead to the serial movement of approvals you are looking for.
Each signer column would act like a flag.Â
- Signer1 column is null.
Signer2 column is null.
Signer3 column is null. - Signer1 column is Paul Choquette.
Signer2 column is null.
Signer3 column is null. - Signer1 column is Paul Choquette.
Signer2 column is Patrick Hairston.
Signer3 column is null.
Since your workflow runs when an item is updated, it will check each column in turn for null. If Signer1 is null, the approval is at Stage 1 still and so on.
