AME (Approval Management Engine)

AME (Approval Management Engine) :

AME Stands for Oracle Approval Management Engine.

AME is a self service web application that enables you to define business rules governing the process for approving transactions in Oracle Application that have integrated with AME.

Uses of AME:
AME Can be used to derive list of approves based on user defined rules and maintain a history of approves statuses when :-

• Transferring employees from one division/cost center to another.
• Authorizing expenses.
• Paying invoices.
• Approval of Purchase Requisition.

Approvals : PO , Requisitions , Expense Report, Sales Quote , Item Approval , Service Contract Approval .... etc.

• Much more – review EBS Module Integration List.
• Business Processes for Transactions and approvals create transaction manage approvals and notifications.  Approve,Reject, Return
• Approval Polices: AME Rules Approval Policies translate to rules in AME and are made up of the following components.if and then transaction category in (Salary) salary increase Pct >15 require approvals up to the first two superiors rule conditions action types and attributes requires post approval from CIO.

Setup Details and Profile Options:

1. AME Responsibilities can be directly assigned in 11i in R12 & higher the responsibilities are assigned through roles.
2. AME : Installed  -Set this profile values to Yes at required application level.
3. HR: Defer Update After Approval : Set this profile value to 'No'  to avoid the status "Pending Approval" after transaction 'Approval.
4. AME : Append to list option on approve region : to control the requester /Initiators to append approves to the approval list . if set to the values 'No' would not all the user to append the list.  

it Supports more than 180 Transaction types.

AME Configure Steps:'

1) Assign AME Business Analyst Role. (From this we can add the AME Responsibility)

1.  Log into Oracle Application with SYSADMIN User.
2. Select User Management Responsibility.
3. Navigate to User Web page.
4. Search and Find the user you want to inherit the security Administrator and customer administrator Roles.
5. Click on Update Icon,
6. Click on Assign Role button.
7. Find and Choose Security Administrator Role.
8. Click on Apply.
9. Repeat the 6 to 8 Steps for Customer Administrator Role.

• The above rules are required when we want to assign user management roles to a specific user.
• In Order to assign AME rights , Just click on assign role and then Enter Approval% and  Search. You will Fine Five roles just check all 5 roles or select appropriate roles as per need.
• Approval Management Administrator.
• Approval Management System Administrator.
• Approval Management Process Owner.
• Approval Management System Viewer.
• Approval Management Business Analyst.

Workflow Background process will Run.

Clear the cache from Functional Administrator Responsibility.

check from the user and you can see AME Responsibility.

Below are the Responsibility you can see

1. Approval Management Administrator.
2. Approval Management Business Analyst.

2) Grant Access to Transaction Types. 

   

    Go to Functional Administrator.

    Click on Create Grant and Create Grant.

    Give Grantee Name.

    And give data security as AME_TRANSACTION_TYPE.

    Click on Next.

    and Give set as AME Calling Applications.

   Click on Finish.

        

3) Create Attributes.

4) Create Conditions.
5) Create Approval Group
6) Create Rules.
7) Setup Profile Options.

Check the profile option i set to Yes or no.
Profile : AME: Installed  ,
check it is in required application level.
Eg: Human Resource.

8) Update PO Approval for Document type.


AME --How to Assign a role

Login as ‘System Administrator’ (not a responsibility)
Navigate to ‘User Management >Users > Query the user and click Update > Search & Add the AM Admin roles as shown below

AME – How to grant transaction type access to users?

a. AME restricts access to transaction types using Data Security. Grant users access to the transaction types using the Grants page.

b. Login as ‘Functional Administrator’ responsibility & click on ‘Create Grant’

AME – How to grant transaction type access to users?

Setup Details – Configuration Variables

i. Important configuration variables are shown below:

ii. Please note the values for these variables can vary for each transaction type.

Setup Details – New Transaction Type

a. A new transaction type can be created using ‘Approvals Management Administrator’

responsibility

Setup Details – New Transaction Type

a. There are 4 steps in creating a new transaction type

b. The new transaction type can be created with different item classes like Header, Line Item, Cost Center, Project, etc depending on the requirement

Setup Details – New Transaction Type

a. There are 11 mandatory attributes whose values can be derived using SQL queries

Setup Details – Approval Process

a. The approval process for the newly created transaction type can be setup using ‘Approvals Management Business Analyst’ responsibility.

Setup Details – Attribute

a. Attributes are the base element for an AME Rule. Attribute values are retrieved from the EBS Applications database

b. AME is seeded with attributes relevant to the transaction type and the user can create new attributes in AME for use in AME rule

Setup Details – Condition

a. Conditions identify values and value ranges for some or all of the attributes available

b. AME rules refer to these conditions to determine if a particular rule is applicable for the specific document (requisition) being approved

c. There are 2 types of conditions – Regular & List Modifiers

Setup Details – Action Type

a. An action type is a collection of actions having similar functionality

b. Every action belongs to an action type. Action types are enabled or disabled for a particular transaction type

c. Voting method (or regime) decides how the responses to the action types are treated

Setup Details – Approve Group

a. It is an optional setup. Required only when additional approves are required for particular conditions The rules defined for the transaction can be based on Approve Groups, Jobs defined in HR setup, or Positions defined in HR setup Additional approves are added here

Setup Details – Rule

Rules specify approvers to be included in the approval list under specific conditions Rule category can be either approver or FYI

Setup Details – Rule

a. Actions are added from action type associated with the transaction type

Setup Details – Test Workbench

a. This is used to determine which AME rules apply to a specific document (requisition)

Test cases with values for various attributes can be saved for repeated use

Setup Details – Test Workbench

a. For real transaction test, requisition’s header ID need to be entered as transaction ID. This would pull values for all the attributes

Setup Details – Test Workbench

a. Final approver list is displayed along with the applicable rules

Setup Report

a. A setup report can be run from Business Analyst’s dashboard which would show all the attributes, conditions, rules used in the transaction type.

b. A sample output of the report is attached below

Purge transaction data using the concurrent program ‘Approvals Management Transaction Data Purge’

In 11.5.10 AME supports only employee-supervisor hierarchy. But in R12, position

hierarchy & FYI notifications are supported.

28. Implementation Guidelines – Approval Decision Tree

i. Model the decision tree based on the approval rules.

ii. Path from the root node to a leaf node represents a rule

29. Error Messages

i. Approval List could not be generated. Please contact your System Administrator to review AME rules setup.

ii. The procedure getNextPosition could not find parent position for : HR Positions:

MM400.Materials Manager

30. Limitations

a. Terminations (of the initiators) are not handled efficiently though AME would rebuild the chain of approval after each approval

b. Not possible to create custom AME responsibilities because of RBAC limitations other than the 2 seeded responsibilities – ‘Approvals Management Administrator', 'Approvals Management Business Analyst'

c. It is not possible to have ‘Notification TimeOuts with Reminders’ within AME.

32. Case Study

i. Requirements / Approval Policies:

ii. If the total requisition value is more than 25,000 USD, then it requires approval from 2

positions above the requestor. If it is less than 25,000 USD, then it can be approved by the requestor himself if he has enough approval authority

iii. If any of the requisition line has an item category ‘COMPUTER.PC’, then it needs to be approved by a specific user

iv. If any of the line item has an item category ‘COMPUTER.MISC’, then ‘IT Director’ position needs to be notified

v. Let us now see in the application, how these policies are modeled

List of AME Tables

select * from AME_ACTIONS

select * from AME_ACTIONS_TL

select * from AME_ACTION_TYPES

select * from AME_ACTION_TYPES_TL

select * from AME_ACTION_TYPE_CONFIG

select * from AME_ACTION_TYPE_USAGES

select * from AME_ACTION_USAGES

select * from AME_APPROVALS_HISTORY

select * from AME_APPROVAL_GROUPS

select * from AME_APPROVAL_GROUPS_TL

select * from AME_APPROVAL_GROUP_CONFIG

select * from AME_APPROVAL_GROUP_ITEMS

select * from AME_APPROVAL_GROUP_MEMBERS

select * from AME_APPROVER_TYPES

select * from AME_APPROVER_TYPE_USAGES

select * from AME_ATTRIBUTES

select * from AME_ATTRIBUTES_TL

select * from AME_ATTRIBUTE_USAGES

select * from AME_CALLING_APPS

select * from AME_CALLING_APPS_TL

select * from AME_CONDITIONS

select * from AME_CONDITION_USAGES

select * from AME_CONFIG_VARS

select * from AME_CONFIG_VARS_TL

select * from AME_EXCEPTIONS_LOG

select * from AME_FIELD_HELP

select * from AME_HELP

select * from AME_ITEM_CLASSES

select * from AME_ITEM_CLASSES_TL

select * from AME_ITEM_CLASS_USAGES

select * from AME_MANDATORY_ATTRIBUTES

select * from AME_REC_ACCESS_TRANS

select * from AME_RULES

select * from AME_RULES_TL

select * from AME_RULE_USAGES

select * from AME_STRING_VALUES

select * from AME_TEMP_DELETIONS

select * from AME_TEMP_HANDLER_STATES

select * from AME_TEMP_INSERTIONS

select * from AME_TEMP_OLD_APPROVER_LISTS

select * from AME_TEMP_TRANSACTIONS

select * from AME_TEMP_TRANS_ATT_VALUES

select * from AME_TEMP_TRANS_LOCKS

select * from AME_TEST_TRANSACTIONS

select * from AME_TEST_TRANS_ATT_VALUES

select * from AME_TRANS_APPROVAL_HISTORY

select * from AME_TXN_APPROVERS