Is there a way to set up parallel or peer approvals for a group?

We have a requirement to approve a record if anyone (not everyone) from the list approves it. For example, the approval requirement for contracts contains two users, A and B. If user A approves a contract, then it gets approved without user B. And vice versa, if user B approves it first, then user A is skipped. Can we do this?

Recently, I had an opportunity to test this, specifically, two users at level 1 and two users at level 2, etc. After speaking with the development team, each user at each level must approve the record. This is working as designed. There is no plan to change that behavior at this time. I believe that there is an open RFE to request the functionality in a future release. I suggest either opening an RFE or voting for the existing RFE if you need that functionality.

[Admin: This post is related to the 10.21.15 post about group approvals. To see other related posts, use the Approvals tag.]

ValuD: How do you reassign organizations in IBM TRIRIGA?

Organizational changes are quite common… Let’s say the sales department moves from one business unit to another in an organizational shuffle. What happens to those notifications and approvals associated with the sales department? What if there are hundreds of records assigned to a contact role in that department?

It is critical that the organization’s facilities software reflects this new organizational structure. This means that associated sales resources (like people, assets, etc.) will need to reflect the organizational hierarchy of the new business unit. Making these changes can be cumbersome and some of the records might get missed.

IBM TRIRIGA allows you to accomplish these tasks easily and effectively. Expert TRIRIGA knowledge is not needed. A basic understanding of Microsoft Office products is all it takes for your administrator to perform these tasks in the TRIRIGA system. Take a look at our “clip-tip” below to learn how…

To know more on how you can do similar tasks with IBM TRIRIGA, enroll in ValuD’s IBM TRIRIGA Portfolio Administration course. This one-day training course will give you an overview on the application of data templates, TRIRIGA security, TRIRIGA licensing, and an introduction to approvals and document manager.

This course is one of our most-highly sought-after courses and helps serve as a foundation for students to learn the capabilities and limitations of the system. We are offering this class either virtually, on site at your location, or at our training center in Dallas. To learn more, please email training@valudconsulting.com.

[Admin: This post is related to the 09.27.16 post about the ValuD training catalog, and the 07.05.16 post about ValuD training for facilities management.]

How do you remove an approval record from the action items?

I have to cancel an invoice which is in Review in Progress status.

So I have developed a custom Cancel action to delete the approval record as well. But the action items of the assigned person is still displaying the approval record. Meanwhile, the count of the action items has reduced since I have removed the Assigned association from the WFActionItem record. Any suggestions on how to remove the approval record from the action items of the assigned person?

Having an issue with activating records and changing status

I’ve recently installed TRIRIGA and I’m having some difficulties with creating and activating records. When I accept any record, it shows a “Review in Progress” status. There’s no notification or action to perform to make it active. Any solution? Is there a way to view a distribution list? Any other way to create a second TRIRIGA user?

First thing, I would check to see if the Workflow Agent is running. If that is not the issue, then you need to examine the workflows for how approvals are set up.

ValuD: Why should more finance executives notice IBM TRIRIGA?

Through IBM TRIRIGA, financial teams can access real-time visibility, streamline processes, identify high- or under-performing locations, avoid over-payment and, most importantly, stay compliant with the latest regulations. Organizational leaders can establish and manage the most strategic goals and objectives within IBM TRIRIGA by logging into the Finance Executive role which focuses on the following:

• Monitoring financial performance metrics and compliance.
• Receiving and responding to approvals and notifications.
• Running performance metrics, such as total occupancy cost per area, leased to owned ratios, capital cost ratio, operating cost ratio, and operation cost per area.

In today’s world where data is so plentiful, don’t lose your competitive edge by not taking advantage of integrated solutions purpose-built to help you boost your financial statements. If you are ready to make the next step with your system integrations or simply want to sit and talk through your roadmap, our team of experts would be happy to continue the conversation with you. We have successfully implemented IBM TRIRIGA with more than 40 clients across a wide range of industries…

ValuD releases latest mobility app in IBM TRIRIGA marketplace

ValuD Consulting, LLC, (www.valudconsulting.com), the leading Real Estate and Facilities Management (RE/FM) technology strategy and IBM TRIRIGA service provider announced today the release of MobilD – a premier mobile application for IBM TRIRIGA. Aimed at bridging the gap between field work and desktop use in IBM TRIRIGA, MobilD promises to be a one-stop solution for busy clients who need access to the IBM TRIRIGA application anytime, anywhere.

The application helps facility managers streamline field processes that benefit from the use if IBM TRIRIGA, resulting in cost savings through increased productivity and more timely decision making. The first release of MobilD addressing the large market demand for the Self Service Requests, Approvals and Work Order Management. Based on active client feedback, future releases are being developed that will meet the needs of Conditions Assessments, Space Management, Reservation Management and Inventory Management.

Developed on Xamarin and Azure open source platforms, MobilD is fully compatible with iOS and Android and provides a real-time sync with the TRIRIGA desktop application. The application is capable of working in offline mode as well and has built-in processing rules to efficiently handle data conflicts. It is completely aligned to out-of-the-box TRIRIGA capabilities and eliminates the need for custom object creation in the IBM TRIRIGA application – ensuring absolute data security…

[Admin: Gopi Latpate also posted the link in the TRIRIGA Around the World Facebook group. This post is related to the 07.28.16 post about mobilizing IBM TRIRIGA with the MobilD solution.]

Does TRIRIGA support lease payments in multiple currencies?

Does TRIRIGA support the following scenario?

• One lease has payments in both Euros and (Swedish) Krona.
• Individual payments need to be done in their respective currencies.
• Approvals for the lease should be done by Euro equivalents.
• Reports should show Euro equivalents.

I’ve seen where one can set exchange rates and currency for a lease, but not where you can have a lease use multiple payment currencies. Many thanks for any input.

Out of the box, the scenario mentioned is not supported. It is not possible to have 2 payment schedules with different currencies with in the same lease. The currency for the dependent object (payment schedules, payment line items, etc.) is mapped from the parent object (in this case, lease) and there is no provision to change the currency of the dependent objects (UOM field is read only).

You can log a request for enhancement (RFE) along with the supporting business scenario with product management. I am assuming this scenario will be more prominent in countries that support Euro and local currency. 

Since it is mentioned that the payments are done in individual currencies, one option that you can consider is to create 2 different leases representing 2 currencies. One for reporting in Euro and the other to keep track in Krona. Hope this helps.

[Admin: To see other related posts, use the Currency tag.]

IV84157: Problems when an action item is triggered by offline form

When an action item is generated as a result of an offline form when there is a single approver, the following three problems are present:

• The action item gets an “Assigned” (as opposed to an “Accepted” status) when only one approver is present.
• The action item count does not increase.
• The notification that normally gets sent out along with the action item is missing.

Essentially, the first problem causes the other two. The action item is incorrectly put into an “Assigned” state (when it should be put into an “Accepted” state). As a result of the action item being put into the wrong state, the action item counts do not take this action item into consideration and the action item counts listed under “Notices” in the portal section are wrong and no notification is generated or sent.

A hard-coded User ID (1) was used in the Incoming Mail Agent. Moving forward, the Incoming Mail Agent will now use the “System” user to process all the incoming mails.

Resolving the “You do not have permission” error message

If you are a TRIRIGA user creating a service request record that goes through the approval workflow, but the approver sends it back requesting clarification, you may receive an error message saying, “You do not have permission to access this page. Please contact your TRIRIGA administrator. Thank you.” This may happen when you are only assigned the “TRIRIGA Request Central” license.

If this is the case and the Security Group setup allows that, you can successfully create the service request record that will go through the approval workflow, and that license will allow the action “Notification”. But if the record is sent back by the approver for clarification, this will require access to the action “Item Record Type” (WorkFlowActionItem) and that license does not provide that by design.

Here is a list of the IBM TRIRIGA licenses providing access to the action “Item Record Type” WorkFlowActionItem… The solution for that error will be adding any one of the licenses above to the requester user, so that it is possible to process the WorkFlowActionItem action properly by design. The rest of security will rely on the Security Group setup for that user, so you can restrict access to any BO or form according to your business needs and requirements.

How do you use a workflow to change to a different form?

Can we change to a different form dynamically through a workflow? I used the Modify Metadata task, but still it is pointing to the old form. The difference between them is that system action “Find” has a different query.

[Updated 12.08.15 to add the expanded version of the question]

Requirement: When a person tries to reassign an approval record, based on its type (i.e for invoices), the system should only allow him to reassign to a person who has approval amount equal to or more than the current approver.

For the above requirement, I mimicked the existing reassign form with changes to the “Find People/User” query incorporating the approval amount changes. Under certain conditions, the Modify Metadata task is used to point to the new form. The workflow executed successfully. But when I try to verify the customization, I see that it is still showing the sections and fields of the old form, even though the form name represents the new one. I am pretty sure that I gave the intended form name and approval record.

I believe that the issue is partly due to the system constraints, where we can’t move to another form from an open popup form. The old form is configured to popup when a user clicks on the reassign action in the approval record. I would like to know whether the above perception is correct?