Re-Evaluate Approvers for Submitted and Pending Requests

By default, UKG Pro Workforce Management™ evaluates a request's approvers (reviewers) only at the start of each approval step. This evaluation can suspend a request in a submitted or pending state when an organizational change prevents the request from being approved because the original reviewers are no longer valid. This can happen when a reviewer is reassigned or terminated, for example.

However, you can configure the system to periodically re-evaluate the reviewers associated with requests that are in either a submitted or pending state. This re-evaluation is done every seven days from the time the request is submitted. If, during re-evaluation, the system finds a submitted or pending request that has an invalid reviewer, one of these actions is possible:

  • If a user who was previously identified as a reviewer is confirmed as a valid reviewer, the system follows existing approval step configurations to manage the request; existing notifications remain in place and are not affected.
  • If a user who was previously identified as a reviewer is not a valid reviewer when the request is re-evaluated, that user is not able to act on the request, and any outstanding notifications to that user are removed from their Control Center.
  • If a user who was not previously identified as a reviewer is confirmed as a valid reviewer, the system sends that user a notification based on the Approver Notification upon Request Reception setting associated with the approval step setting, and that user can approve or refuse the request.
  • If no new reviewers are identified, the system applies the automatic action (approve or refuse) to the request and deletes the notification to the former (invalid) reviewer. The automatic action, which is required for request re-evaluation, is configured in the approval step settings.

    • Note: In all cases, the system continues to execute any notification reminders you have configured in the approval step settings. See Approval Step Settings for more information.

Configuring request re-evaluation

For the system to re-evaluate reviewers for submitted and pending requests, the request subtype must be specified to use an approval setting with appropriately configured approval step settings. Examples of request subtypes that can be configured to use approval settings include availability change, availability pattern, cover, open shift, swap, and time-off.

How to configure request re-evaluation

To configure UKG Pro Workforce Management™ to periodically re-evaluate reviewers of requests in a submitted or pending state:

  1. Reviewer list: The system refuses requests for which a valid reviewer cannot be determined. Ensure that the reviewer list you will use with the approval settings is configured so the system can always determine a valid reviewer. One way to achieve this is to user role-based reviewers instead of explicitly named reviewers. See Reviewer Lists for more information.

    Note: The system also evaluates any recipients you have specified in the Also Notify section. While recipients do not have a role in the request approval process, consider using role-based recipients to ensure proper notification management.

  2. Approval step setting: Create or edit an approval step setting configured with the Enable approver re-evaluation check box.

    See Approval Step Settings for more information.

  3. Approval setting: Specify the reviewer list in the Default Approval Sequence field, and add the approval step setting in the Default Approval Step Settings field.

    See Approval Settings for more information.

  4. Request subtype: Specify the approval setting with the appropriate reviewer list and approval step setting in the Approval Settings field of the desired request subtype.

    See Configure Request Subtypes for more information.

  5. GDAP: Add the request subtype to applicable Generic Data Access Profiles (GDAP).

    See Generic Data Access Profiles for more information.

  6. Employee Visibility Period: Specify the request subtype in the Request For field of the employee visibility period.

    See Manage Employee Visibility Periods for more information.