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Dynamics GP Upgrade and GP Purchase Order Workflow

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Posted on by IceMan 1,115

We have a large Dynamics GP customer of about 400 users that leverage the Dynamics GP Purchase Order workflow approval process.  Pretty straight forward, a user submits a PO for approval and the approver gets an email to approve.   We are running into a significant problem as part of our upgrade to GP 2019.  During the upgrade, something is triggering all legacy PO emails back out to the approvers even after they have been processed either approved or declined.  So when a particular GP database is upgraded, staff are slammed with repeat emails to approve that seem to go back in perpetuity.  

Anyone have any ideas on how to prevent this from occurring?  It seems to be some scheduled job that runs and send them out but for some reason the status is appearing as not sent, even though they had been sent.  

Any help is appreciated. 

Categories:
Microsoft Dynamics GP
  • Suggested answer
    Derek Albaugh Profile Picture
    Derek Albaugh on at
    RE: Dynamics GP Upgrade and GP Purchase Order Workflow

    Well, this would be an example of a Reminder email that would be sent to approvers after a period of time, as specified on the workflow step itself, to remind them that a workflow is still pending their approval, which usually means that this workflow hasn't been completed or rejected outright, but is still pending some type of action be done on it.

    When you look at the WFI10002 table, for example, prior to doing the upgrade, specifically the Workflow_Status values, what do those show?

    The values are here:

    1- Not Submitted

    2- Submitted (Depricated)

    3- No Action Needed

    4- Pending User Action

    5- Recalled

    6- Completed

    7- Rejected

    8- Workflow Ended (Depricated)

    9- Not Activated

    10- Deactivated (Depricated)

    Any workflows that show a Workflow_Status of 4, means that it still is requiring action on it.

    The same for the other WFI tables, if a Workflow_Step_Status shows a 2, it means it is pending user action.

    Reminder emails are sent out via a SQL job that usually calls a stored procedure which looks at the SY01500 table for a list of company databases, then uses other procedures to identify workflows that need reminder emails sent out, escalation to other approvers and the like.

    My thoughts is you may be running into what I mentioned above.

    Thanks

  • IceMan Profile Picture
    IceMan 1,115 on at
    RE: Dynamics GP Upgrade and GP Purchase Order Workflow

    The emails are part of the purchase order approval workflow and one example was for a PO from 01/23/2020 that was cancelled.  It somehow reappeared on Thursday, February 4, 2021 8:30 PM when the school was offline and going through the upgrade.

    It says the following: Subject: **REMINDER** You have a task assignment for Purchase Order 1116100173

    **REMINDER**

    You have been assigned a task for the Approval step in the Purchase Order Approval workflow for Purchase Order 1116100173.

    Task Deadline: 1/23/2020 5:11:00 PM

    Edit or view the document: 1116100173

    Approve

    Reject

    Delegate

    Is there a way we can simply flag any open Workflows to complete within that company so they don't possibly send if the user forgot to do that?

  • Suggested answer
    Derek Albaugh Profile Picture
    Derek Albaugh on at
    RE: Dynamics GP Upgrade and GP Purchase Order Workflow

    What kind of emails are being re-sent to the approvers after the upgrade?

    Is it the approval emails stating they have a PO pending their approval, or is it a reminder, delegation, etc email type that is getting sent out to them?

    If the Workflow_Status doesn't show the PO as Completed and/or Final Approved, I could maybe see it sending out emails for overdue workflows, which is why we recommend completing all open workflows before doing an upgrade of Dynamics GP.

    Prior to doing an upgrade, are there records in the WFI tables for open workflows?

    Thanks

  • IceMan Profile Picture
    IceMan 1,115 on at
    RE: Dynamics GP Upgrade and GP Purchase Order Workflow

    I might call it a fluke but this is the second large scale upgrade were we have had the exact same problem.  We are going from GP 2013 12.00.2038 to Dynamics GP - 18.2.1100.  The process is one we have used many times before.  We upgrade in cohorts of about 50 databases.   Back them up from GP 2013, restore to a separate SQL instance to upgrade to GP 2016, backup again and then restore to the new SQL environment and run the final GP 2019 upgrade.  Upgrade works fine but the customers go nuts when they get flooded with the old Workflow emails.  I worry that if I disable the workflow that when it is enabled again the old emails will flow out again.

  • Joseph Markovich Profile Picture
    Joseph Markovich 3,900 on at
    RE: Dynamics GP Upgrade and GP Purchase Order Workflow

    I am not sure if this is the same thing -- but your post reminded me of something similar that happened to us.

    When we were testing our upgrade from GP 2015 R2 to GP 18.2, the users were receiving emails for Payables transaction approvals. These were coming from our test company and not the production company still running 2015 R2.

    In Administration > Setup > System > Workflow, we unchecked the Enable Email for Workflow checkbox right before we took GP 2015 R2 down and started the upgrade.

    Then after the upgrade was completed to 18.2, we checked that box again.

    I hope this helps.

    Joe

  • Suggested answer
    Derek Albaugh Profile Picture
    Derek Albaugh on at
    RE: Dynamics GP Upgrade and GP Purchase Order Workflow

    I don't know that I've seen this as of yet.........when you say you upgraded to GP 2019, is it the year-end update, i.e. 18.3.XXXX?

    Even if the Workflow tables were upgraded as part of this upgrade, it's actually stored procedures, assemblies and functions that Workflow uses to first determine whether approval of a workflow needs to be done, and then whether an email needs to be sent out, and then send the emails out.

    There isn't anything in the upgrade process that would do this, even if these files were re-created, which they are as per the wfDeployClrAssemblies procedure, which is re-created during the upgrade of the system database.

    Along with the legacy PO emails being sent back out to the approvers, is the Workflow Status of those POs changing, or just the emails being re-sent out?

    There are SQL jobs to detect delegation and expired workflows, which will escalate workflows depending on the setup, but even then, not something that we've seen in any upgrades and we've had the current Workflow functionality since GP 2013 R2.

    Let us know........

    Thanks

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