18.5 Changing Approval Plans

Approval plans can be fully edited at any time.

In the Approval Plan window, click Search to view all approval plans. To refine your search:
- Enter a partial value in the Plan Name field. The partial value is not a wild card and is case sensitive: enter a precise ‘starts with’ string of characters.
- Select a Plan Type to filter the search results by the type selected.
- To see all approval plans, leave fields blank.
When the list of approval plans appears, click Select against the one you want to edit.
- To expand and view all the steps in your plan click the Expand All button.
Add a step: Refer to Task Buttons above. Follow the same procedure as creating an approval plan.
Maintain a step: Click on the existing step in the task tree to highlight it. Select the Activity, Owner or Criteria button as appropriate and perform your changes.
Delete a step: To delete a step, click on the existing step in the task tree to highlight it. Click the Delete button above the task tree. DO NOT click the delete button at the top of the plan – this will delete the entire plan. A warning message will be displayed requiring confirmation before a task is deleted.
Delete a Plan: Click on the Delete button at the approval plan screen. A warning message will be displayed requiring confirmation before a plan is deleted. A plan cannot be deleted if it is in use.
When you have finished making changes click Update. A confirmation window will display:
- Click OK in the confirmation window to save your changes.
- To clear the approval plan screen without saving changes click on the Clear button

If there are unsaved changes the following warning message will be displayed:

Click OK. Unsaved changes will be saved and the screen cleared.
Click Cancel. Unsaved changes will not be saved and the screen cleared.

Changes During Approval

An approval plan can be changed at any time. However the change may not necessarily affect documents currently in the approval process, especially when tasks are added to a plan:

Any task that is edited or added that is a prior task will have no affect on document routing. For example, if the second task in a plan is deactivated, any document using this plan that has already passed this step (i.e. is on task 3 or beyond) will not be affected.
Any task that is not a prior task (i.e. the task is ahead of where the document currently resides) will affect a document using this plan if it is changed. For example, the task criteria may be edited or the task deleted or deactivated.
Any task that is not a prior task (i.e. the step is ahead of where the document currently resides) will not affect a document using this plan if it is an added task.

If the document is returned to the start of the plan however (example a requisition is returned to the requisitioner by an approver) a new task will be included in the restarted approval process.