bpm task delegation

[Former Member]

I like to how does delegation work in SAP BPM workflow.

Usecase is:

# If task assigned to a person is not fixed/approved on time, it need to be escalated to that person's manager. how do i implement this in BPM workflow.

what are my different options?

I heard BPM can do roundrobin or broadcast task allocation/notificaiton, but i have not heard if it can do delegation. Can it do?

[Former Member]

In the process model, you can raise a non critical exception (CompletionDeadlineIsNonCritical) in the human task and forward it to the person's manager. You may refer the document for an example of how to do it. Understanding Boundary Events of SAP NetWeaver BPM.

[stefan_henke]

Hi,

using boundary events is an option. However, you cannot delegate the existing task. The boundary event will trigger creation of a second task for the manager. The first task (which expired) will be cancelled in case of a critical exception or left as is in case of a non-critical exception. The manager has to be added dynamically to the list of potential owners of the second task. But as stated before, determination of the right user who is the manager of the task owner has to be done outside the process flow (e.g. via a service call to the backend).

Best regards,
Stefan

[Former Member]

Hi,

I believe one of the way to solve is to put some custom code in your corresponding event(method), in this case completeDeadlineNonCritical     which gets auto generated in webdynpro. You can overwrite that event by whatever customization u want, in this case use the api  for delegation or calling a service..

In this way your existing task will still be there.

Thanks

Manish

[junwu]

you have to figure out who is the manager of the current approver, bpm doesn't support this out of box.

[stefan_henke]

Hi,

the notion of task delegation in NetWeaver BPM is different than what you described. It can be used by an user who has a task assigned to himself in order to forward it to another user. The task will then be assigned to this user. However, it is an explicit action the user has to trigger (e.g. in the task UI).

There is another action called 'nominate' which is an administrative action which allows administrators of the task to forward the task to a specific user. However, this is also an explicit action.

Tasks can be broadcasted to multiple users. This can be realized if you add multiple users to the list of potential owners. But as soon as the task gets assigned to an actual owner, it will not be visible anymore for the other potential owners.

An automated delegation to a user if a deadline has bee reached is currently not supported by NetWeaver BPM.

Regards,

Stefan