19.1.7 Parent Groups

Specifying a Parent Group allows you to attach two rule groups together so that a group can inherit the attributes of another. Groups are not created as parent groups but become classified as a parent when they are attached to a group as a ‘parent group’. The permissions of the parent become hierarchically available to the group to which it is attached (ie the ‘child’). Note that there is not a similar backwards relationship created between the ‘child’ group the parent.

The principal of associating a parent to an ARG is to create a default approval process whereby an approval plan or owner of an approval role can be located in a group other than that assigned directly to the user. A ‘master’ approval group can be used in a similar way as sub plans are used when defining the workflow process: to eliminate repetitive setup and configuration steps.

PECOS P2P will look at the approval rule group hierarchy to resolve the approval process, looking first at the buy for user or requisitioner’s approval rule group. If a plan or role owner is not found, the system will look at the parent group of the user’s approval group, then to the next parent group and so on. In this way a default approval hierarchy is created.

Example1:

An organisation has a defined process for approving all orders over £100,000 irrespective of where they originate. The approval process for orders with a value up this amount however are subject to departmental approval which varies by department. For all documents in excess of £100,000 there are five approval roles and three users filling each role. In total there are 35 departments within the organisation that require a separate approval rule group.

There are over 500 setup steps required just to assign users to the roles for the approval process for documents in excess of £100,000. To reduce the number of setup steps required for each departmental approval rule group, a single group is created just containing the role assignments for these high value approval steps and assigned as the parent group of all the 35 departmental groups (these roles are therefore not assigned within the departmental groups). When a purchase order in excess of £100,000 is routed for approval, PECOS P2P will look first at the group assigned to the user (the departmental group). Being unable to find an owner of the role it will then look at the parent group where the role will be resolved.

Creating an approval group to manage common approvers in this way also reduces the amount of future administration required when a change needs to be made (for example a senior approver is replaced). The approver’s role assignment only needs to be edited for one approval group rather than (in our example) 35 times.

Example 2:

An organisation has a single, defined order approval and invoice approval process that it wishes to roll out across the entire organisation. Requisition approval however is locally defined and will differ for each organisation or department.

In order to ensure that all users follow the correct purchase order approval process and invoices are consistently approved, organisation wide Purchase Order Approval and Invoice Settlement Approval plans are written and assigned to a ‘Master’ approval rule group. This group also contains default approvers for the roles contained within these plans. Regional administrators are responsible for defining Requisition Approval plans and maintaining their departmental Approval Rule Groups which is assigned the ‘Master’ group as parent.