PPS200MI AprovePO ION API and Service Accounts

Hi everyone, I'm using PPS200MI ApprovePO ION API to Approve POs in a workflow but the problem I'm running into is with Service Accounts. The only way I can get the ApprovePO ION API to approve a PO is to have the Service Account assigned to the user that will be Approving the PO. But I need to have more than one person be able to Approve POs. Is there a way to have a group of users assigned to a Service Account? I tried setting up a user in User Management (IFS) named Purchase Order Approvers and then assign a distribution group with the users I need to Approve POs but that didn't work.

Thanks,

Tony

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Catharine Linsbauer

Hi Tony, I would use a generic user - something like “M3WorkflowUser” as a base for API calls to M3. As for your approvers create a purchase approval group and connect appropriate users or AD groups to it. On the task for approval, in distribution connect the approval group. In that way the users assigned to the purchase order approval group all get the task. The authorization against M3 is carried by the generic “M3WorkflowUser”. Catharine

unknown

Thanks Catharine for the help and replying back to my question. I tried using a generic user for the Service Account but the issue I'm running into is for the ApprovePO ION API it's using the user assigned to the service account to determine if the user can approve the PO. It works fine for the user that is assigned to the service account but if I use another user to approve POs and they aren't assigned to the service account it doesn't work. All users I'm testing with are set up to approve POs in PPS235.

Mads Stenbye

Hi Tony,

What you are trying to do is not really possible (impersonation of a service account in ION Workflow). If you run an ION Workflow for this PO approval process and want to approve the PO using PPS200MI then you should set parameter 070 in PPS095/E to 5. This will ignore PPS235 completely and require an approval using PPS200MI or PPS170MI by a generic user.

Inside the workflow you would then use Business rules inside ION Desk to create your approval matrix that determines amounts etc.

Best regards,

Mads Stenbye - Columbus

unknown

Thanks Mads, I'll use the approach you've outlined for the PO Approval workflow.

piotr-wieczorek

Just confirming Mads replay. If you only can, you should use External approval (PPS095/E 070 = 5) which gives flexibility as it blocks PO (or PO proposal) only in case of total net amount increase, not at each change as other does.

The whole flow logic has to be build in ION but you can still use PPS235 to store relations between user / manage and limits if "flat structure" is enough for you.

But you have to be aware that in this case PO can be approved only via API, not possible to approve directly in M3.

unknown

Thanks Mads for replying to my post. This was a big help.

unknown

Thanks everyone for the help with this. We set PPS095/E 070 = 5 for an order type and then created a PO with that order type. Not sure if we are missing a step but when I use ION API ApprovePO in a workflow it still seems to be picking up the user's credentials from the service account that is tied to the ApprovePO API. Should I still be able to use the ApprovePO API in a workflow to have different users approve POs? Right now it's picking up the user assigned to the service account's signature even though I'm passing a different user's signature into the ApprovePO.

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