Approvals for all modules

Spoiler alert — This trick is efficient if you are using Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 or lesser versions. In NAV 2016, you can use workflows and do wonders!

When it comes to Approvals, it is bit cumbersome in NAV where you do not have approvals other than Sales and Purchase documents.

So as a workaround we have developed approvals for all card pages(Documents) and all list pages(Journals).

Pros: Very simple to use, and develop.

Cons: No delegations, sorry.

How did we pull this off?

1. We capture the users who initiated/sent to approval/approved/rejected/reopened the document/journal. To perform all these, we have separate Boolean values in the User’s master table.
2. 4 Page Actions to Send for Approval, Approve, Reject and Reopen.
3. Every time a user clicks on a page action, we validate whether the user can perform this action.
4. An Option DataType for Status to make the card/list page to editable/noneditable according to the current status. Status values typically will be Open, Sent for Approval, Approved, Rejected. When you reopen the document/journal the status will bound back to Open.
5. Set necessary filters and page views, which user can view what and what not.