The purpose of Oracle Approvals Management (AME) is to define approval rules that determine the approval processes for Oracle applications. The following graphic illustrates the typical approval process used in an organization.
Key Components of AME
Attributes
Attributes are business variables with a single value for a particular transaction.
Examples of attributes are:
• transaction’s total amount
• percentage of discount
• an item’s category
• a person’s salaryOracle comes with a lot of pre-defined attributes. Additional attributes can be created by the consultants during any implementation based on requirements. The following graphic uses the example of a purchase order to illustrate attributes and their values:
Conditions
This is the if part of a rule. A condition is a statement that is either true or false, for a given transaction. For the rule to apply to a transaction, all
of its conditions must be true for the transaction. For most practical purposes, the implementing team needs to create conditions to meet the approval rules for clients. The following image illustrates the conditions in rules and indicates the types of conditions:
Actions
An action is an instruction to AME to modify a transaction’s approval process in the manner you specify. An approval rule’s then part (its consequent) consists of one or more actions. Actions that modify a transaction’s approver list are Approval actions or simply Approvals. Actions that generate a production (a variable-name or a value pair) are Production actions. The following graphic illustrates an action in the approval
rule:
Typically, AME provides all the action types and actions your implementation will require. There are many action types to choose from, so even if you don’t expect to create a new action type or action, you must review the descriptions of the action types, to ensure you understand how to translate your business rules into appropriate actions.Approver Groups
An approver group can either be an ordered set of one or more approvers (persons and/or user accounts) or it can be a list, which is dynamically generated at rule evaluation time. Creating approver groups is a very common practice to implement custom approval rules.When you create an approver group, AME creates for you the corresponding actions of the pre- and post-approval action types automatically. These actions are available to all transaction types. You can nest approver groups or in other words it is possible to make one approver group a member of another approver group. The following graphic illustrates the example discussed below:
RulesRule associate one or more conditions with an approval in an if-then statement. Before you can create rules, you must create conditions for the rules to use. You may need to create (or have a system administrator create) some custom attributes and/or approvals. You may also need to create some approver groups. Thus, while creating rules is your ultimate goal, it is also the last thing you do when you set up AME.Rule Types:
There are eight rule types in AME. Seven of them provide rules that participate in generating transactions’ approver lists; these are the
approver-generating rule types.The eighth generates productions.
• List-creation rules
• List-creation exceptions
• List-modification rules
• Substitutions
• Pre-list approval-group rules
• Post-list approval-group rules
• Combination Rules
• Production Rules
Different rule types use different condition and action types, and have different effects on a transaction’s approver list.
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Oracle Approvals Management – Overview
Attributes
Attributes are business variables with a single value for a particular transaction.
Examples of attributes are:
• transaction’s total amount
• percentage of discount
• an item’s category
• a person’s salaryOracle comes with a lot of pre-defined attributes. Additional attributes can be created by the consultants during any implementation based on requirements. The following graphic uses the example of a purchase order to illustrate attributes and their values:
This is the if part of a rule. A condition is a statement that is either true or false, for a given transaction. For the rule to apply to a transaction, all
of its conditions must be true for the transaction. For most practical purposes, the implementing team needs to create conditions to meet the approval rules for clients. The following image illustrates the conditions in rules and indicates the types of conditions:
An action is an instruction to AME to modify a transaction’s approval process in the manner you specify. An approval rule’s then part (its consequent) consists of one or more actions. Actions that modify a transaction’s approver list are Approval actions or simply Approvals. Actions that generate a production (a variable-name or a value pair) are Production actions. The following graphic illustrates an action in the approval
rule:
An approver group can either be an ordered set of one or more approvers (persons and/or user accounts) or it can be a list, which is dynamically generated at rule evaluation time. Creating approver groups is a very common practice to implement custom approval rules.When you create an approver group, AME creates for you the corresponding actions of the pre- and post-approval action types automatically. These actions are available to all transaction types. You can nest approver groups or in other words it is possible to make one approver group a member of another approver group. The following graphic illustrates the example discussed below:
RulesRule associate one or more conditions with an approval in an if-then statement. Before you can create rules, you must create conditions for the rules to use. You may need to create (or have a system administrator create) some custom attributes and/or approvals. You may also need to create some approver groups. Thus, while creating rules is your ultimate goal, it is also the last thing you do when you set up AME.Rule Types:
There are eight rule types in AME. Seven of them provide rules that participate in generating transactions’ approver lists; these are the
approver-generating rule types.The eighth generates productions.
• List-creation rules
• List-creation exceptions
• List-modification rules
• Substitutions
• Pre-list approval-group rules
• Post-list approval-group rules
• Combination Rules
• Production Rules
Different rule types use different condition and action types, and have different effects on a transaction’s approver list.
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