Modify Email notifications to approver/delegates to include Custom field

[CynthiaZ]

Hello, has anyone been able to modify Email notifications to approver/delegates to include in the email notice a custom field that is populated in the report header?

Thanks!

[KevinD]

@CynthiaZ I cannot say with 100% certainty on this, but I can say with 99% certainty that this isn't something that can be done. I've never seen it or heard of it being done. What is the custom field you want to have included and what is the business reason? I'm asking because maybe there is an alternative. 🙂

[CynthiaZ]

Hi Kevin, thanks for your reply!

We have a large team of engineers that operationally report to several project managers, since they work on multiple construction/field projects concurrently. In most cases, it will not be the HR-assigned supervisor in Concur who will approve the reports.  In the report header, the employee specifies the  project #  (custom field) and we were hoping by including the customer field in the body text of the email, the delegates of the HR-assigned supervisor  (i.e project managers) would quickly see the report for his respective projects and proceed to approve those expense reports.   

The field is a custom field used as a dimension in the accounting string for our financial system/reporting.  We also thought of asking the employee to include the project #  in the in the report header name,  although it would have to be entered twice by the employee and they may forget to enter it in the report name.  

Thanks, Cynthia     

[KevinD]

@CynthiaZ we do have a feature called Cost Object Approval for this exact situation. This is when you have employees working on projects that are being ran by someone that is not their direct manager/approver. You set up each project approver in the system. When employees select that project on their report header or on the entry line items, the report will still go to their default approver, but it will then go to the Cost Object Approver to see what is being charged against their project. The initial set up takes some time (you'll need SAP Concur to do it), but once done saves a lot of work as the system will route the expense reports to the correct project owner.

[CynthiaZ]

Hi Kevin, thanks for the suggestion. I will follow-up with Concur.  If the project list/project owners is not static, i.e adding new projects,  who maintains it (client concur admin or Concur).  Thanks, Cynthia

[KevinD]

@CynthiaZ you would maintain the list. I know you can use an FTP of some sort to help maintain the list, but not sure how to go about doing that.