ACTIVATE BANK ACCOUNT APPROVAL

WORKFLOW [AX2012] Updated: June 2018 The ability to singlehandedly change payee bank accounts, poses a threat to organizations, as it makes it easy to commit fraud by changing an intended target bank account during a transfer of money. As a countermeasure the Banking module includes a bank account approval workflow, which ensures that new and changed bank accounts cannot be used until approved. This guide will cover how to set up and activate of the bank account approval workflow. In addition, the guide will describe, how the workflow is used in practice.

CREATE WORKFLOW USING THE WORKFLOW EDITOR Workflows are created and configured using a workflow editor. For more info on how to use the

workflow editor, see:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg731809.aspx

To set up and activate the workflow, follow the following step:

1. Go to AMC Banking > Setup > Workflows

2. Click New

3. Select the Bank account number approval workflow

4. Click Create workflow. The workflow editor will start automatically

5. Drag, connect and configure workflow elements on the workflow editor canvas. For

inspiration, see Basic workflow configuration example below

6. Click Save and Close

7. Refresh the Workflows page to see the created workflow

BASIC WORKFLOW CONFIGURATION EXAMPLE

The following workflow configuration example should work for most organizations, but please note,

that there is not a single, correct way to set up workflows. Workflows can be configured in numerous

ways and should therefore be carefully tailored, to fit the requirements and practical use of your

organization. To configure the basic workflow example, do the following steps:

1. Drag an Approve bank account workflow element on the canvas in between the start and

end elements and connect them like shown below

2. Right-click the Approve bank workflow element and select Properties

3. Click Advanced settings and apply the following settings

4. Click Close

5. Double-click the Approve bank workflow element to move down a level

6. Right-click the Step 1 element and select Properties

7. Click Basic settings and specify Work item subject and Work item instruction

8. Click Assignment, open the Assignment type tab and select Participant

9. Open the Role based tab and select Approve customer and vendor bank information in

the Participant combo box

10. Click Assignment, open the Time limit tab and change Days value to 5

11. Click Assignment, open the Completion policy tab and select Single approver

12. Click Close

13. Click Save and Close to save the workflow configuration and close the workflow editor

14. Specify Version notes in the Save workflow dialog

15. Click OK

16. Select the Activate the new version from the Activate workflow dialog

17. Click OK

HANDLING MULTIPLE WORKFLOW VERSIONS

A workflow can have several configured versions, but only one versions can be active. To open the

Workflow versions dialog, follow the steps below:

1. Go to AMC Banking > Setup > Workflows

2. Click Versions

From the Workflow versions form, it is possible to see detailed information regarding the workflow

configuration versions. Furthermore, it is possible to activate/deactivate, import/export, copy and

delete the individual workflow configuration versions.

USING THE BANK ACCOUNT APPROVAL WORKFLOW Once the bank account approval workflow has been created and activated, the workflow will prevent

payment clerks from using new and changed bank accounts, without the required prior approval by

an authorized user. Furthermore, a non-editable field Workflow status field will appear in the

customer and vendor bank account setup pages.

The workflow status field has one of the four following values:

- Active: The bank account has been properly approved (or did already exist prior to enabling

the workflow) and is available for payment execution

- Inactive: The bank account has just been created or the bank account number has been

changed.

- Pending: The bank account has number has been submitted for approval and is still pending

the approval by an authorized user.

- Rejected: The authorized approval user rejected the submitted bank account. The user can

now change the bank account number and resubmit the record for approval.

SUBMITTING BANK ACCOUNT FOR APPROVAL

Adding new or changing existing payee bank accounts will result in Workflow status being set to

Inactive, preventing the bank accounts from being used. To activate the bank accounts, user must

submit the bank account for approval.

Only users, that has been assigned the AMC Banking manager security role are allowed to submit

bank accounts. Bank accounts are submitted, doing the following steps:

1. Open the Workflow menu and click Submit

2. In the submit dialog, specify a remark in the Comment field if required

3. Click Submit

Once submitted, a message will confirm the bank account submittal and Workflow status changes

to Pending. The bank account record is locked and can no longer be edited nor deleted by the user.

Furthermore, two new options, Cancel and View history, appear in the Workflow menu.

- Cancel: Allows the user to cancel the bank account submittal, which is e.g. useful if bank

account number has a type. Cancelling the workflow, results in the Workflow status

changing to Rejected, allowing the user to edit and submit the bank account record again.

- View history: Opens a detailed workflow history overview, related to the selected bank

account record

APPROVING PENDING BANK ACCOUNTS

When a bank accounts enters Pending state, the next step is to approve the pending bank account.

Only users assigned the AMC Banking workflow approver security role, can approve bank accounts.

Bank accounts are approved, by doing the following steps:

1. Go to AMC Banking > Payees > Pending bank accounts

2. Select a bank account record to approve, open the Workflow menu and click Approve

The bank account approver of course also has the option to reject a bank account. If a bank

for some reason cannot be approved, the approver simply chooses the Reject option from

the Workflow menu instead

Once approved, the bank account Workflow status changes to Active, and can now be used for

payments

TROUBLESHOOTING WORKFLOW SYSTEM If the bank account approval workflow does not work as described above, e.g. that workflow status

does not change, when submitting bank accounts, then most likely the standard workflow system is

not running or is not configured correctly.

Below we have listed a few things, which can be easily checked and addressed by a user with

administrator privileges.

CONFIGURE SETUP EXECUTION ACCOUNT(S)

First important thing to do is to configure a workflow execution account, which is used by all

workflows to run and execute planned procedures. The workflow execution account runs business

logic for the application and accesses Microsoft Dynamics AX data. The domain account that you

select to serve as the workflow execution account must have the following characteristics:

✓ It must be a dedicated account. A dedicated account is used only for a specific purpose.

✓ It must have a password that does not expire.

✓ It must have minimal access to network resources.

To specify the workflow execution account, follow the steps below:

1) Open System administration > Setup > System > System service accounts

2) In the Workflow execution account section, specify a domain account to serve as the

workflow execution account. The domain account can be specified in one of two ways:

a. The network domain and related account username/alias

b. A Microsoft Dynamics AX user.

Please note, that the account that you specify is assigned to the Microsoft Dynamics AX

system administrator role

Please also note, that If you are using Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 or later, the steps

should be repeated for each partition in your Microsoft Dynamics AX installation.

ENSURE NUMBER SEQUENCE EXISTS AND IS CONFIGURED

Next things to configure are the number sequences used by the workflow. Number sequences handle

the identification numbers, which are automatically assigned to every workflow that is created and

every instance of a workflow that is generated. If there is not any free number sequence in the

system, then a new one should be created instead.

https://technet.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/hh242127.aspx

To specify which number sequences are used to generate workflow IDs and workflow instance IDs,

complete the following procedure:

1) Open System administration > Setup > System parameters

2) Open the Number sequences tab

3) Select the Workflow ID row and select the number sequence to use, to generate workflow

IDs in the Number sequence code field

4) Select the Instance ID row and enter the number sequence to use to generate workflow

instance IDs in the Number sequence code field

BATCH JOBS SHOULD EXIST AND BE RUNNING

The workflow system uses three batch jobs to process messages, determine due dates for work items

and process notifications for line items. These jobs should occasionally be run, for the workflow

system to work correctly. Second thing to check is whether these batch jobs exist, and whether they

are being run, by doing the following steps:

1. Go to System administration > Inquiries > Batch jobs

2. Ensure that the three workflow batch jobs listed below exist

3. Ensure that the batch jobs, are occasionally being run, e.g. by monitoring whether the

value of Scheduled start date/time changes. Especially the Workflow message processing

job should be executed quite often

If the batch jobs are not present or are not being run occasionally, then the workflow system

should be reconfigured. Delete existing workflow batch jobs (if any) and reconfigure the workflow

system, by doing the following steps:

1. Go to System administration > Setup > Batch group

2. Click New and specify Group and Description

3. Open the Batch servers tab and ensure that server(s) are present in the Selected servers

list

4. Go to System administration > Setup > Workflow > Workflow infrastructure configuration

5. Click Next

6. Select a batch group for the workflow messaging batch job (optional)

7. Click Next

8. Select a batch group for the workflow due date processing batch job (optional) and specify

how often this batch job should run.

9. Click Next

10. Select a batch group for line-item workflow notification batch job (optional) and specify how

often line-item notifications should be processed

11. Click Next

12. Click Finish to finish and close the workflow wizard.

Please note, that if you cannot edit the batch groups in the Workflow infrastructure configuration

page, then it is most likely caused by the workflow batch jobs belonging to another system partition.

In that case an administrator should delete the obsolete batch jobs.