Workflow Time for 2nd Approvers

[stephanierenner]

Hello,

I'm running the Workflow Cycle Times Report, which is great! Except, it doesn't take into account the 2nd approvers or when a report is forwarded to another Approver manually. Therefore, it makes the Processing time look extremely long in cases where the 2nd approver or a manually added approver was slow to approve. Is there a way to incorporate those into the workflow report?

[KevinD]

@stephanierenner you may want to consider building your own report from the Workflow (Audit Trail) folder in the data warehouse. Here you can add data items such as Step Entry Date and Time and Step Action Date and Time to see all the approvals that happened on the report and the Date and Time of each action. You could then create a calculation for: Step Action Date and time minus Step Entry Date and Time to see the amount of time the step took.

[andersma]

Kevin,

I had a custom 'Invoice Lifecycle Report' created in Cognos for the same reason.  I needed to know how our invoices moved through our process, tracking SLA's and identifying potential bottlenecks in our approval process for resolution and remediation.  The report calculates the time an invoice spends at every stage up through payment.  Are you able to leverage my report as a guide for developing a common report for all customers?

[stephanierenner]

Hi @KevinD  - thank you for that! It's good to know that there is a possibility to get this information into a report. Now, to figure out how to build said report!

[KevinD]

@stephanierenner there is a folder in the data warehouse named Expense Report Workflow Trail. That's where you want to go. 🙂

[stephanierenner]

@KevinD alright, maybe it's just a terminology thing, but where exactly is the "data warehouse"?

[KevinD · Accepted solution]

@stephanierenner Well, it is technically always in Cognos, but you just need to know how to access it. Have you built or edited a report using Cognos? 

Also, let me ask this...what level of Cognos user would you consider yourself? Beginner or Intermediate? I'm asking because if you are new to Cognos, you would highly benefit from the Reporting class we offer. It comes at a very affordable price too. The class is FREE to attend. It is a great foundational class and a good way to learn the basics for Cognos from our Reporting team. 

If you are interested, use this link: https://www.concurtraining.com/cnqr/cognos-11-registration. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the list of upcoming classes. It really is a good investment of 90 - 120 minutes of your time.

[stephanierenner]

Hi @KevinD ! This is great information! I would consider myself a beginner. I've been shown some stuff in Cognos before but it's so complex I didn't retain a whole lot. Haha! I will definitely take a look at the class you reference, as well as I'm signed up for a couple of breakout sessions this week during the Fusion conference on reporting. Hopefully those will help! Thanks again!