March 19, 2010 in Blog by Amer

Workflow Task or Approval… What Should I Use and Why?

A question might come to your mind, what’s the difference between a Dynamics AX 2009 Workflow Task and a Workflow Approval in AOT. They both are having almost the same properties and you could attach them to a workflow template.

Workflow in AOT

The workflow in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 is managed in a way that enables the workflow designer (who does the workflow configuration, a functional consultant in most of the cases) divides one “stage” approval into multi steps.

For example, if a Leave Request needs to be approved by the HR department, then the case might be in a way that approval must be processed by an HR Assistant and NOT the HR Manager in case that the leave does not exceed three days. But if the Leave Request is for more than three days… the HR manager must approve it also.

To enable this scenario, the workflow should be fixable so that the workflow designer is able to add as many steps per one approval “stage” as he likes. This is done by adding a Workflow Approval to the Workflow Template. When you go and configure this workflow template in the Workflow Configuration, you will be able to add as many steps as you wish… and you could also configure each step by specifying who this step will be assigned to and in what condition. And the workflow approval stage will not be completed unless all the steps are completed.

Now for the Workflow Task, this cannot be done. A Workflow Task represents only ONE STEP of a Workflow Approval. The workflow designer cannot add steps to this Task; he only could assign a person and a condition for this step/task. Task is nothing but a single unit of work.

The following image describes what I said:

Task and Approval in Dynamics AX 2009 Workflow

Another differnce is that a a task does not have a fixed outcome. However, you can add any number of custom outcomes to the task, such as Completed or Skipped.