How to create an Approval Workflow associated to a List in SharePoint 2010?

2
votes

I was recently tasked with taking over the SharePoint administration for my company, but I have very limited SharePoint experience. I'm using SharePoint 2010.

I have a List with a few built-in columns (like Status, Assigned To, etc) and I'd like to perform a few actions when a new List item is created: change the Status and Assigned To columns of the List item, send out an email, and then create a task for the user's manager to approve it. However, in SharePoint Designer, I cannot figure out how to create a Reusable Approval Workflow and associate it to a List, or a List Workflow and add an Approval Task to it.

If I create a Reusable Approval Workflow, when I try to use the "Set Field in Current Item" Action, I don't have any of the List Columns available (to set the Status, Assigned To, etc).

And when I create a List Workflow, I can access the columns for the list (Status, Assigned To, etc) but I can't figure out how to make the new List item go through the Approval process.

So my question is: how do I Associate a Workflow to a List, change some of the List column properties, and create an Approval Task for the Manager when a new item is created?

Am I missing something here or am I not approaching this correctly?

3
sharepoint-2010workflow
For the record... You can associate a reusable workflow to a content type, and then you can use all of its columns. But in the designer, this association can only be done at the moment the workflow is created. Also a reusable workflow is one that is intented to be distributed in a package. You have to associate it to a list later on, either manually via the list settings in the UI, or via C# code. I don't know about the approval tasks and such, though. – Geeky Guy
Thanks for the response. I'll try associating the workflow with a content type. – freakinthesun

3 Answers

0
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The easy way is just opening your site with designer and configure the approval workflow from there. You can select the list and make all the changes. I would give you a step by step guide, but some did this awesome article, so check it out http://plexhosted.com/billing/knowledgebase/226/How-to-create-a-simple-approval-workflow-in-SharePoint-Designer.html

0
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I discovered the answer to this question on my own. It's due to the way SharePoint handles Tasks during a workflow. I was using the "Assign a Task" or "Assign a To-Do" when I needed to use COLLECT DATA FROM USER. This will return the Id of the task, which can be used later to retrieve the user's Approval or Rejection.

0
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Did you end up creating a custom workflow to do all tasks yourself?

I have also tried a List WorkFlow and a Reusable Workflow and started by copying the "Approval - SharePoint 2010" workflow as a model in both cases. The caveat then is the users are tied to completing both the task and workflow items that are created.

An approver wants to receive the email to Approve or Reject a request on a Calendar from the Approve/Reject View in SharePoint and let that be it. They do not want to track tasks on Approval.

A requestor only wants to receive an email that their request was Approved or Rejected and enter another for a different time if the initial request was rejected.