Oracle Workflow VS Oracle Approvals Management

Question

Hi,
I am new to Oracle Apps. I would like to know the difference between Oracle Workflow and Oracle Approvals Management. I a bit confused. Why we need to have Oracle Approvals Management module if the same can be achieved through Oracle Workflow. Am I missing sometiing here.
Thanks
IB

Answer 1

Hi
I'll try to explain the difference. Workflow is the background process which is followed by the self service transaction. The workflow consists of a series of tasks or functions and exh function will return a 'result'. The routhe through the workflow process will depend on the rersults. For example, if the workflow task is 'validate input' and the result can be 'valid' or 'invalid', after this taks the workflow will follow either the 'valid' path or the 'invalid' path. Eventually, the workflow will reach an 'end' task when the tranaction is complete.
AME is a process of determining approvers dynamically from the transaction data, or during the transaction. AME is called in different ways from each module in the e-Business Suite. In HR for example, it is usually called during the 'review' process. It will execute a rule based on conditions (which must be true). The conditions are in turn based on the values of attributes you define in AME. Effectively, you can define a business rule such as IF ORGANIZATION = ABC THEN APPROVERS ARE FIRST 2 SUPERVISORS IN SUPERVISOR HIERARCHY.
AME is usually embedded into a workflow task.
I hope that explains it in simple (relatively non-technical) terms!
Regards
Tim