Best Practices for Exception Level Design

[jwild]

Please share your best practices for exception level design.

1. What levels do you use for what types of audit rules?
2. Do you have certain number ranges defined for certain user roles (e.g., exception levels 80-89 apply to Approvers)? 
3. Are you only auditing expense reports with remaining exceptions over a certain defined level? How are you accomplishing that? 
4. Any "gotchas" or roadblocks to be aware of? 
5. Any other recommendations do you have in this arena? 

Thanks! 
Justin Wild
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

[patilr1982]

I have to say... Its a lot of questions to run through in one post. Let me answer them one at a time.

1. Most of my clients use level 99 for error messages and others are used for warnings/to make the system behave in a certain way. Technically speaking, you have special exception levels that are used by Concur for system level messages. However, we will not talk about those as we cannot change them. 

2. Whilst your recommendation sounds rational, most clients have not had the forethought of thinking to this level. Often, the T&E projects get much less attention and resources than they deserve. It is a good idea to group exception levels, if possible. This will also aid in the analysis of the data at a later point. You can group messages as info for users, info for approvers, attention/action required by approvers, info for audit team, attention/action for audit team and technical exceptions.

3. This can be achieved by setting conditions in your workflow. The condition will stop the SKIP of a particular step if there is at least one exception with the defined level. Then it is up to you to define Audit rules that trigger an exception at this level.

4. Personally, I am not aware of issues caused due to exceptions level use. The issues mostly come from other areas such as the conditions used in the Audit rules themselves.

5. If in doubt, you should use a new exception level as it will aid in later analysis. It may, however, mean additional configuration work for you.

[jwild]

Rohan, 

Thank you for your insights! There is some great information here and thanks for confirming several of my suspicions! I appreciate you taking the time to respond. 

Justin Wild
Cloud Solutions Analyst
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research