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Budget approval request application

To help you get started with the RunMyProcess platform we are creating some application templates for you to use. These applications are pre-installed on your account, and/or can be downloaded into your account. The applications are fully functioning and you can use them for your company's applications. You also have the possibility to customize the applications for your specific needs. ie. add your own budget categories or departments, define specific approval workflows etc. In this example, we will look into one of the applications - the budget approval request management application. The guide below describes how to use the Budget approval request application that is available from your RunMyProcess account.

Note: by default, this application is set to test mode. When in test mode, all the notification emails of an application are sent to the user who submitted the request, and all manual tasks are assigned to the requestor. To redirect emails and assign manual tasks to a correct user, you have to put the application in production. For more information, please refer to How to put the application in production.

Description of the application

The web interface ‘Budget approval request'

To open this web interface, select My applications on your Desktop. Select the test mode and click on Budget approval request.

open_new_request

The Budget approval request will open in a new tab of your web browser.

appli

Here is the description of the different elements of this web interface:

  • Requestor: the user who initiated the request. This field is not modifiable.
  • Status: the status of the request. The status can take the following values: “Draft”, “Waiting for department manager approval”, “Waiting for financial director approval”, “Waiting for managing director approval”, “Waiting for executive director approval”. “Rejected” or “Approved”.
  • Internal Ref.: internal reference of your request. This reference is created automatically when a new request is submitted.
  • Department: the department concerned by the budget approval request.
  • Request title: the title of the budget approval request
  • Expenditure type: the type of expenditure
  • Completion date: the planned date of the purchase.
  • Cost justification: description of the savings and benefits of the purchase. This field is optional.
  • Details of the purchase: the array of all the purchases associated with the request
    • Description: the description of the purchase.
    • Category: the category of the purchase.
    • Quantity: the required quantity.
    • Unit price (€): the unit price of the purchase.
    • VAT rate: the VAT rate that applies to the purchase.
    • Subtotal (€): the total amount excluding taxes.
    • VAT (€): the VAT amount
    • Total (€): the total amount including taxes.
  • Approval steps: the list of approval steps as well as the name of the users assigned to each step. The number of mandatory approval steps depends on the total sum requested. If the total amount is under 5,000€, there are 2 mandatory validation steps and the 3 other steps are optional. If the total amount is between 5,001€ and 10,000€, there are 3 mandatory validation steps. If the amount is above 10,000€, there are 5 mandatory validation steps.
  • Comments: the comments added by different actors of the process. Enter a comment in the text box and then click Add comment to submit your comment.
  • Save button: this button allows you to save your request as a draft, without submitting it. All drafts are available in the web interface Budget Approval Management - Report, under the tab My requests by status.
  • Save and submit for approval button: this button launches the budget approval request. You can submit a request only when all the required fields are filled in.

The Budget Approval Management process.

To open this web interface, select Processes in the Toolbox. Click on the small arrow next to Budget approval management to view the process.

process

This is the design of the process:

Capture_decran_2011-12-28_a_16.20.07

Once a new request is submitted, the team manager receives a notification email with a link towards to the manual task that was assigned to him/her. Once the team manager opens the manual task, he/she can then approve or reject the request by clicking on the corresponding button.
Note: to reject a request, the team manager needs to select a refusal reason.

If the request is rejected, an email is sent to the requestor notifying him/her of the rejection which terminates the process. If the demand is validated, another manual task is created and is assigned to the financial director, who then has to validate or reject the request. Once all the manual tasks have been validated, the requestor is notified of the validation of his/her request.

The web interface Budget approval requests - Report

To open this web interface, select My applications on your Desktop. Select the test mode and click on Budget approval request.

budget_requests_report

This application has 5 tabs.

  • In My tasks a user has access to all tasks assigned to this user.
  • My requests by month contains all requests started by the connected user, aggregated by month.
  • My requests by status is the aggregated view of the requests started by the user filtered by status
  • My requests by department is the aggregated view of the requests started by the user filtered by department
  • Approved requests by period contains the list of approved requests, aggregated by year.

How to test the application

Launch a new process instance

To try the application in test mode, select My applications on your Desktop and the select Test. Open the application Budget approval request.

application_test

Fill in the web interface and click Save and submit for approval. If you want to save the web interface as a draft and submit it later, click on Save. You can access your drafts in the web interface Budget approval requests - Report, under the tab My requests by status.

Validate manual tasks

A notification email is sent for every step of the process. When the process is in test mode, notifications are sent to the user who submitted the request : he/she will receive every email sent by the process and be assigned every manual task.
In addition to the notification email, you will also be able to access your tasks in the web interface Budget approval requests - Report, under the tab My tasks.

Monitor the execution of the process

To monitor the execution of the process, go to Reports, select Process reports and open the report Budget approval management.

rapport_process

In this report, a user can access all the process instances launched in test mode. In a process instance, the pending stage of the process is indicated by an orange dot. To access to variable of the process instance, click under the tab Parameters.

monitoring_process

How to put the application in production

In this part, you will learn how to put the application in production. Once the application is in production, the manual tasks are assigned to a correct user and the emails are sent to the correct email address.

Adding new users to the application

To test the application with different users, you have to create them an account, by selecting Users in Account. You can set up their roles in the process by assigning roles of the organization “Budget Approval - Organization”. Next, open a role, for ex. Team managers and click on Users. Then, click on the pen icon to edit the role. Next, drag and drop the users into the Authorized users field and save.

Modification of the reports

Different reports of the application (web interface reports, process reports) are set up to filter the requests in test mode. You need to modify them so that they display the requests in live mode. Select Budget approval management in Projects and open the five 5 web interface reports. Then, select Live and save the reports. Repeat the process with the processes reports.

Creation of a new version

The last step is the creation of a new version. For this application you will need to create a new version of your application that will be used in production. To do that, select Budget approval management in Projects, open the tab Versions and click New version.

new_version

Call your version “v2”, go to the “Resources” tab and click on “Use a specific version” for the sub-project “Mail provider” (see the screenshot below)

version_sous_projet

Next, select “Version1” for this sub-project, click on “OK” and save the version.

version_en_prod

Now go back to the project and put the new version in production. Your project is now in production. Go to “Desktop” -> “My applications” and open the web interface “Budget approval request” to start a new request.

How to customize the application for my needs?

Now that you’ve created a new version of the application there are many things you can do to customize the application for your specific company’s needs. You can customize things such as the list of internal departments, types of expenditures, product categories etc. Note: it is necessary to create the new version from the initial sample version pre-installed on your account, as described in the steps above, before making these customizations.

How to modify the list of departments?

Go to “Toolbox” -> “Custom Lists” and open the list “Budget Approval Management - Departments list”. You can then add or delete lines. Do not forget to save your changes.

department_list

How to modify the list of expenditure types?

Go to “Toolbox” -> “Custom Lists” and open the list “Budget Approval Management - Expenditure types”. You can then add or delete lines. Do not forget to save your changes.

How to modify the list of product categories in the purchases array?

Go to “Toolbox” -> “Custom Lists” and open the list “Budget Approval Management - Category”. You can then add or delete lines. Do not forget to save your changes.

How to modify the VAT types list?

Go to “Toolbox” -> “Custom Lists” and open the list “Budget Approval Management - vat rates”. You can then add or delete lines. Do not forget to save your changes.

How to modify the syntax of the budget approval requests reference number?

Go to “Toolbox” -> “Processes” and open the process “Budget Approval Management”. Select the “start event” of your process and edit it. Then modify the value of the variable “internal_ref”.

Note: the value returned by next_value() is different if you launch your process in test mode or in live mode.

EC${next_value("internal_ref")?number?string("0000")} returns EC0001

  • to modify the prefix of the internal ref, replace or delete the string “EC”. PREFIX${next_value("internal_ref")?number?string("0000")} returns PREFIX0001
  • to have a number on 3 characters rather than 4, replace “0000” by “000”. EC${next_value("internal_ref")?number?string("000")} returns EC001
  • to start form another index that 100, use the following script: EC${(next_value("internal_ref")?number+100)?string("0000")} returns EC0101
  • to add a sufix to the internal ref, add a string at the end: EC${next_value("internal_ref")?number?string("0000")}SUFIX returns EC0001SUFIX
  • to add the date to the internal ref, use this script (example: 2012-01- EC${now("yyyy-MM")+”-”+next_value("internal_ref")?number?string("0000")} returns EC2010-01-0001
  • to add the year in the internal ref and reinitialize the number at 0 every year, use this script: EC${now("yyyy")+”-”+next_value("internal_ref")?number?string("0000")} returns EC2012-0001
  • to reinitialize the internal ref. to 0, change the string used by “next_value” EC${next_value("internal_ref_2")?number?string("0000")}

How to change the currency in the purchases array?

Go to “Toolbox” -> “Web interfaces” and open the form “Budget approval request”. Select the purchase array and in the label of the columns modify the € character. Do the same thing in the second array below. Do not forget to save your changes.

How to modify the list of users available for each approval step?

Go to “Toolbox” -> “Organization” and select one of the role, “Department managers” for instance.

modify_orga

Then click on the yellow pencil icon to edit the role and click on “users”.

modify_lane

Now drag and drop users under “Authorized users” and save the lane.

add_users_lane

How to change the name of the approval steps?

To do that, you have to modify both the web interface and the process. First, go to “Toolbox” -> “Web interfaces” and open the form “Budget approval request”. Select the different approval steps and modify their labels and save your changes.

change_steps_label

Then go to “Toolbox” -> “Processes” and open the process “Budget Approval Management”. Next, unlock the modifications for the process by clicking on the yellow pen icon.

unlock_modifications_process

Now, select the different manual tasks of the process, click on the “edit” button and go to the “Input parameters” tab. Under this tab, modify the value of the variable “my_status” accordingly. Do this for all the five manual tasks and save your changes.

modification_of_the_status

How to modify the investment amounts that trigger additional mandatory approval levels?

To do that, you need to modify the web interface. Go to “Toolbox” -> “Web interfaces” and open the form “Budget approval request”. Select the widget “Department manager”. In the properties of the widget, go under the tab “Rules” and click on “View or edit script” next to “Required”.

required_step

In the script, modify the amount - 5,000 in this case - for which the process has to switch from 2 mandatory approval step to three.

amount

Do the same thing for all the approval steps and save your changes.

How to modify the maximum number of approval steps?

To do that, you have to modify both the web interface and the process. First, go to “Toolbox” -> “Processes” and open the process “Budget Approval Management”. Next, unlock the modifications for the process by clicking on the yellow pencil icon.

unlock_modifications_process_2

Then delete the steps you don’t need with the “delete” key of your keyboard (“fn” + “delete” on a Mac). Below is an example of a 2 approval steps process.

2_steps_process

Next, go to “Toolbox” -> “Web interfaces” and open the form “Budget approval request”. Select the widget(s) you don’t need, “Executive director” for instance, delete it by clicking on the (-) button and save your changes.

delete_gadget

How to change the language of the application?

To change the language, you have to modify all the labels of the two web interfaces and modify the values of the measures. To modify the label of the widgets of the applications and the values of the measure “status”, please refer to the section How to change the name of the approval steps?. You also have to modify the value of the variable “status” on the two steps “Notify the author”. Also modify the labels of the web interface “Budget approval requests - Report”. Next, go to “Toolbox” -> “Processes” and open the process “Budget Approval Management”. Unlock the modifications for the process by clicking on the yellow pencil icon.

unlock_modifications_process_3

measures

Then click on the “Measure” button and modify the name of the measures and save the process.

How to modify the look of the application?

You can add your logo on the application. Go to “Desktop” -> “Files” and upload your logo.

add_file

Then in “Toolbox” -> “Web interfaces” and open the web interfaces “Budget approval request” and “Budget approval requests - Report”. In the “Design” tab, replace the first widget by an image and select your logo. Make sure this widget is visible for the two screens of the web interface “Budget approval request” and save the application.

modif_logo

To modify the colors of the application, you have to edit the colors. In the “Implementation” tab, edit the CSS.

edit_css_button

Then select the css file “budget_approval_css_blue.css”, click on “edit”, select the content of the CSS and paste it in a text editor. With the text editor you have to replace the color codes used in the CSS.

Here are the different color codes to replace:

  • color of the title: #004f93
  • color of the selected tab: #4195DD
  • dark color of the unselected tabs: #003C82
  • end color of the background: #9BD6F2

css_colors

Use ctrl+F to replace these strings. If you want your application to be red, here is how to proceed:

  • replace #004F93 by #C60000
  • replace #4195DD by #EC3C1E
  • replace #003C82 by #96230F
  • replace #9BD6F2 by #FF6A64

Then save your file under "budget_approval_red.css" for example. Go back to the configuration of the web interface, click on the "edit CSS" button and in the new window click on "upload". Once your file is uploaded on RunMyProcess, select it as the new CSS of your application.

Here is what the "Budget approval request" web interface looks like with a red logo and the red CSS. Click here to download the red CSS

budget_request_red

How to put my modifications in production?

Please refer to the chapter Creation of a new version.