Approval Delegation process in Nintex workflow

[#1]

Approval Delegation process in Nintex workflow

Delegating approval tasks from one user to another user:

1.     Delegating an individual task from task owner to another user.

Delegation is processed from the Approving, Rejecting and Reviewing Items task pages when the user interaction task is configured to allow delegation.

To delegate a task:

• In the 'Approve Reject' page, in the Status section, click on delegate.
• In the Delegate page:
  • The Delegate field is used to specify the user to assign the selected task to. To select a user, click on the address book icon on the right to select a user from the Select People or Group dialog box.
  • The Comments field is used to provide instructions or additional information to the user the task is being delegated to. This text is appended to the 'Approval required' notification that is sent to the delegated user.
  • When all settings are configured, click the OK button.
• The task is now reassigned to the selected user.

2.     Delegating the task from one user to another user for specific period:

A user can delegate their tasks to another user for specified duration, or may delegate their tasks due to absence within the organization.

To set your personal preferences:

• Activate the drop down from the logged-in user name link at the top of a page.
• Mouse-over Nintex Workflow 2010 then click on Task Delegation.  
• If you have not set up delegation before, the summary area will be empty. Click on Delegate tasks to a user between specific dates.    

• The following 4 sections that need to be set:
  • From the beginning of: the date when delegation begins, at midnight in the morning. Click the date picker tool icon to ensure the date is set in the appropriate format for your environment.
  • Until the end of: the date when delegation ends, at midnight that night. Click the date picker tool icon to ensure the date is set in the appropriate format for your environment.
  • Delegate To: click the Lookup button and search for the appropriate user to delegate your tasks to within the specified dates.
  • Scope: check the box for delegation to apply only to the current site, otherwise delegation will be applied throughout the entire SharePoint farm.

Note: Task delegations done through Task Delegation feature are only used when a task is initially assigned to a user. If a task is reassigned via the 'Delegate workflow task' action, or by another user manually, the task will be assigned to the specified user, even if they have long term delegations defined.

3.     Delegating task through Nintex workflow task history list.

• Open the Nintex Workflow Task List > Open the task which you need to delegate.        
• Open the task which you need to delegate from one user to another user, click Delegate and enter the delegate name & Comment for the task.

4.     Delegate all tasks from one user to another using “NWAdmin” operation.

This operation is used reassign all tasks from one user to another. It can be scoped to a single site, or the entire environment. Note that tasks can only be delegated to individual users, not groups.

Note that this operation uses the Nintex Workflow web service, and requires credentials to connect to the web service.

NWAdmin.exe -o DelegateAllTasks -currentUser domain\username -newUser domain\username [-siteUrl urlToASharePoitnSite] [-comments comments] [-sendNotification] [ -username username] [-password password] [-domain domain]

Parameters Name	Description
-currentUser	The domain\username of the user whose tasks will be reassigned.
-newUser	The domain\username of the user who the tasks will be assigned to.
-siteUrl	A URL to a SharePoint site containing tasks to delegate. If this parameter is not provided, tasks in the whole environment will be delegated.
-comments	Optionally add any comments to explain the delegation.
-sendNotification	Provide this parameter to send a notification to the new assignee informing them that the task is now assigned to them.
-username	A valid SharePoint user’s username. If no siteUrl is specified, the user must be a farm administrator. If a siteUrl is specified, the user must be an administrator of the site. If no username is provided, the credentials of the user running the command will be used.
-password	A valid password for –username
-domain	A valid domain for –username

“able to achieve this with the Nintex web services (http://yourserver/_vti_bin/NintexWorkflow/Workflow.asmx) with the DelegateAllTasks Action”.

[andrewg]

Tasks can also be escalated. Which is a type of auto-delegation. In the task settings, under escalation tab (in flexi task for example), You can choose to complete a task, or delegate to someone after a time period. This form of delegation can be very handy in order to keep a time sensitive workflow moving without administrative intervention.

[#3]

Is there a way to complete a task after it has been delegated?

I understand that the task can be delegated to another person after a certain amount of time. But what happens if that person does not respond also? is there a way to complete the delegated task after a certain amount of time after it is delegated? or does it just sit there til that user completes it or delegates it?

[andrewg]

Beside using the flexi task configuration to delegate, you can delegate other tasks by using the Action ID. In a parallel, one branch will have the task (in that task, save the action id to a variable as configured within that task action) this is for Request Approval, Request Data, Request Review tasks.

In the other branch, have the Delegate workflow task action using that variable. If you need to delegate the same task multiple times, I would see a similar process, but having multiple delegate task actions in the right branch.

[akrasheninnikov]

Are the permissions for viewing and delegating other users' tasks documented? Is Full Control absolutely required to do so?

Design+Approve+Contribute - what's missing?

[#6]

In 2007 workflows "Site administrators can set delegation settings for a user other than themselves" for a specific period through "Task Delegation", does this option exist in 2013?

[andrewg]

I didn't see it in the documentation, but I was able to do so as a Full Control site owner.

[andrewg]

Yes, in a few ways. You can do this through a workflow action Delegate Workflow Task, through user settings to auto delegate all tasks generated while the user show they are away, admin users, NWAdmin actions, auto settings within the task action itself. But to set a group apart as delegators, there was a 2010 addin specific for this Nintex Workflow 2010: Delegation Control Groups Addin​

[#9]

Thanks Andrew.

In my case, the option was not enabled in the Nintex Workflow settings in SharePoint's central admin. However, the addin will be the way forward for us.

[#10]

Can you update the documentation in the post? The command contains an em-dash prior to the "currentUser" variable which causes the the console to error with the parameter not specified if you copy + paste from this page.

Thanks!