Change orders submitted for supplier collaboration are not triggering the configured approval workflow in our 24A instance. The change orders save successfully and show status ‘Pending Approval’, but no worklist notifications are generated and approvers don’t see tasks in their BPM worklist. We’ve configured workflow rules in Setup and Maintenance with approval hierarchy based on change order amount, but the routing logic never executes. Manual approval from the change order screen works, but automated workflow is completely bypassed. The workflow rule configuration shows as active, and similar rules work fine for purchase requisitions. Has anyone resolved workflow not triggering issues specific to supplier collaboration change orders?
I’ve seen this issue when the change order submission process doesn’t properly invoke the workflow API. There’s a setup parameter in supplier collaboration preferences that controls whether change orders go through approval workflow or direct submission. Navigate to Setup and Maintenance > Manage Supplier Collaboration Preferences and look for the ‘Change Order Approval Required’ flag. If this is set to No, workflow is bypassed even if rules are configured.
This sounds like a BPM deployment issue. After you create workflow rules in Setup and Maintenance, the corresponding BPM process needs to be deployed to the runtime environment. Go to BPM Worklist > Administration > Process Deployment and check if the ‘Supplier Collaboration Change Order Approval’ process shows as deployed. If it’s in draft status, you need to deploy it explicitly.
Check the workflow rule conditions more carefully. Supplier collaboration change orders have specific attributes that must be populated for workflow routing to work. The ‘Collaboration Type’ and ‘Supplier Site’ attributes are often required for the workflow engine to determine routing. If these are null on your change orders, the rule conditions won’t match and workflow won’t trigger. Also verify that your approval hierarchy is properly configured for the business unit associated with the change order.
I had a similar problem in 23D. The root cause was the change order object scope in the workflow rule definition. For supplier collaboration, you need to specify the transaction type correctly. There are multiple change order types - internal change orders vs supplier collaboration change orders - and they use different workflow routing paths. Check if your rule is filtering on the correct document type code for supplier-facing changes.
Thanks for the suggestions. I verified the BPM process deployment status and it shows as ‘Deployed’ with no errors. The workflow rule is configured with Document Type ‘Supplier Change Order’ which seems correct. Could there be a permission issue preventing the workflow engine from reading the change order attributes?