Help with Custom Statuses in Approval Processes

[tracy_fox]

Good morning We have set-up a Time Off Request project that allows our staff to request TO from their manager prior to booking off time in their Personal Calendar. As well we have created custom Issue statuses (TimeOffApproved & TimeOffDenied) for this and included them in our custom issue type of TimeOff Request . While we can manually edit these statuses within the request, our single-use Issue approval attached to the request will not let us select those custom statuses from the dropdowns (start approval path when, if rejected then). The help article 217221927-Creating-Approval-Processes seems to imply we should be able to (- Set Status To: Contains different options for each object, and the drop down options will include any Custom Statuses you may have added to your AtTask account), but I cannot figure it out. Any suggestions?

[HavenMe]

Hi Tracy, The wording on the help site could probably be updated to be a little clearer with this use case. The only statuses that will show in the " Start Approval Path when status is set to... " section, are the statuses that match that object the approval is created on. So, a Project Approval will only show Project statuses, Task Approvals only show Task statuses, and Issue Approvals only show Issue statuses. Take a look at what object (Project, Task, or Issue) you are creating the Approval process on. The custom status items and the approval base object probably do not match. Thanks!

[GregBe1]

Agreed. If you have custom statuses set up for Issues, and you're setting an approval process on an issue, all those statuses should show up when creating the approval. You say you can manually change the status to one of those issues, but you don't see it in the approval step - that sounds strange. If you're sure that's the case, maybe there's some bug somewhere, but we see all our custom statuses when setting up an approval process.

[RenaldoJo]

I was having a similar issue, so I did a search and came to this forum. I found that within the approval processes (and not have to use single use processes) you can only use the statuses that are locked in the status location

[tracy_fox]

Well I have good news on this front with a caveat. While using the first process noted above and then also this process 216668458-Creating-and-Customizing-Statuses-for-the-Workfront-Site, we worked with our config consultant and were able to get the custom status set-up and working with our Issue Approval process (see snapshot). The only caveat is that although as a sysadmin followed the steps, we could not get the custom status recognized initially but our consultant followed the exact same steps and was successful - she couldn't explain why though.

So until our organization needs this functionality created again, I won't be trying it again but know that it is possible :)