Looking For Help With SharePoint 2010 Workflow

Question

I’m way behind schedule and need help with a list approval workflow in SharePoint 2010 or Designer. I can use the “Approval – SharePoint 2010” to auto generate approval requests to our same three approvers (one at a time) for all requests, however, a fourth step is required as listed below.

1. Employee submits a training request form to SharePoint
2. Employee receives a confirmation email indicating initial receipt of the form.
3. The first approval request will be sent to the employee’s manager (manager’s email is included in the submitted form - field titled “Manager”)
4. Upon approval by the manager, the process would then proceed as if using a normal Approval – SharePoint 2010 process of approval.

In Designer, I created a workflow to send the manager an approval request using “Current Item:Manager” and “Current Item:Created By” to send the submitter an acknowledgement email. I would rather do this in SharePoint as I don’t know how to develop Designer Workflows.

Can I use two workflows, one for the manager that would somehow trigger the standard “Approval – SharePoint 2010” workflow for the other three? I tried using “Current Item:Manager” in the address field in SharePoint but that doesn’t work like in Designer. Thank you.

I'm still having problems and can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Below is what I have with steps 2 and 3 being the same and step 4 ending the process.

Step 1 Email Current Item:Created By

Then Start Approval process on Current Item with Current Item:Manager

Step 2 If Current Item:Aproval Status euals 0;#Approved

Start Approval process on Current Item with John Doe

Else if Current Item:Approved Status equals 1;#Rejected

Stop the workflow and log Approval was Rejected

Step 3 IF Current Item:Aproval Status euals 0;#Approved

Start Approval process on Current Item with John Smith

Else

If Current Item:Approved Status equals  1;#Rejected

Stop the workflow and log Approval was Rejected

Step 4 IF Current Item:Aproval Status euals 0;#Approved

Start Approval process on Current Item with Frank Crank

Else

If Current Item:Approved Status equals  1;#Rejected

Stop the workflow and log Approval

Answer 1

You can definitely do this in SharePoint Designer. Your logic would be close to this:

Send email to [Current Item: Created By] #Receipt
Start Approval process for Manager #Initial Approval.
If Current Item:Approval Status equals Approved
 Start Approval process for Secondary Approval #Secondary Approval 
Else
 Stop Workflow and log Approval was Rejected