designer

B Creating a New
Approval Process
Thanks to the new Start Approval Process and Start Document Set Approval Process
actions provided with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, you can now create your own
approval process. These two actions are similar to the Approval workflow template that
is available out of the box with SharePoint Server 2010, and they represent generic approval
workflows that can be incorporated into your own custom workflow or amended
to meet your needs. Prior to using these actions, you must be familiar with how to use
the Approval workflow template in the browser. Additionally, it is important that you understand
what these actions do and how you can modify them. I’ll cover these topics in
this appendix.
These actions are subworkflows—that is, workflow logic is already defined in the actions,
and they use task items that are assigned to one or more users, known as task
participants. The approval task item contains the fields Status, Due Date, Requested By,
and Consolidated Comments and also a number of task buttons that depend on the
configuration of the approval action. The form Approval.xsn is automatically created as
a Microsoft InfoPath form with four views—Main, ChangeRequest, ChangeView, and
ReassignTask.
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