Human Resources and Purchasing share job and position information if they are installed together. You should consider your requirements from both perspectives before deciding on an approval/security structure.
Human Resources uses jobs to classify categories of personnel in your organization, and associates information like the exempt/non-exempt code and EEO code with individual jobs. Examples of a typical job include Vice President, Buyer, and Manager. Positions represent specific functions within these job categories. Examples of typical positions associated with the Vice President job include Vice President of Manufacturing, Vice President of Engineering, and Vice President of Sales.
Human Resources uses position hierarchies to define management line reporting and control access to employee information.
Review your Personnel department's system requirements before you decide how you want to use positions, jobs, and position hierarchies in Purchasing.
Approval hierarchies let you automatically route documents for approval. There are two kinds of approval hierarchies: position hierarchy and employee/supervisor relationships.
If you choose to use employee/supervisor relationships, you define your approval routing structures as you enter employees using the Enter Person window. In this case, Purchasing does not require that you set up positions.
If you choose to use position hierarchies, you must set up both jobs and positions. While positions and position hierarchies require more initial effort to set up, they are easy to maintain and allow you to define approval routing structures that remain stable regardless of how frequently individual employees leave your organization or relocate within it.
Security hierarchies let you control who has access to certain documents. For example, you can create a security hierarchy in which only you and other buyers in that hierarchy can view each other's purchase orders.
Security hierarchies are not an alternative to approval hierarchies, but something different altogether. Changes you make to a security hierarchy do not affect the approval hierarchy and vice versa.
If you want to specify a Security Level of Hierarchy for any of your document types, you must first define all positions which should have access to the documents you want to restrict in this manner. (Even if you are using jobs to route documents for approval, you must define positions before you can enable this Security Level). You then define a security position hierarchy, and specify it in the Purchasing Options window.
Purchasing uses Oracle Workflow technology to handle approvals. Workflow works in the background, using the approval controls and hierarchies you define in the setup steps below to route documents for approval. Because Workflow handles your approval process in the background, you can use Oracle Workflow Builder's easy interface to modify your approval process. See: Purchase Order Approval Workflow. See: Requisition Approval Workflow.
To Setup Approval and Security:
Use the Financials Options window to indicate whether you want to route documents for approval using position hierarchies or employee/supervisor relationships. This decision applies only to the Business Group you choose for your Purchasing installation in the Financials Options window. See: About Financials Options.
If you choose to use position hierarchies, you must define positions in addition to jobs. You later build your hierarchies by referencing these positions.
Use the Job window to create each of the job titles in your organization (for example: Buyer, Supply Base Engineer). If you are not using positions, you assign one or more employees to each job. If you are using positions, you assign one or more positions to each job, and later assign one or more employees to each position.
Attention: You assign authorization rules to jobs or positions based on your decision in Step 1. It is important to ensure that your job/position infrastructure supports the different approval levels in your organization.
For example, if your purchasing staff includes a Junior Buyer, a Senior Buyer, a Supply Base Manager, and a Purchasing Manager, all of whom have different authorization levels for different document types, you should define a different job or position for each role. If your purchasing department is comprised of five employees with common authorization limits, then a single approval group (see steps 7 and 8) could be given to those five jobs or positions. See: Representing Jobs and Positions.
Use the Position window to create each of the positions in your organization. This step is required if you plan to use either security or position approval hierarchies. See: Representing Jobs and Positions.
Use the Position Hierarchy window to build and administer your position hierarchies. There are two distinct uses for position hierarchies in Purchasing: 1) document approval routing and 2) document security control. You can use a single position hierarchy for both purposes. See: Representing Jobs and Positions. See also: Position Hierarchies.
Use the Purchasing Options window to choose a single security hierarchy for your installation if you want to use the document Security Level of Hierarchy for any or all of your document types. See: Defining Control Options. For additional overview information, see Document Security and Access and Approval Routing.
Attention: Note that a security hierarchy controls which positions (and therefore which employees) have access to a particular document type. It does not control whether an employee has the authority to approve a document or perform other actions. An Off-line approver is a valid employee with approval authority, but without access to the relevant form. An On-line approver is an active employee with approval authorization, and with access to the relevant form.
Use the Document Types window to specify distinct security and approval controls for each document type/subtype. See: Defining Document Types.
Use the Approval Groups window to define approval authorization rules. See: Defining Approval Groups.
Use the Assign Approval Groups window to associate approval rules with a specific job or position and a document type. See: Assigning Approval Groups.
Use the Enter Person window to assign employees to jobs or positions. If you are not using position approval hierarchies for document routing, you must provide the employee's supervisor. See: The online help for the Enter Person window, Enter Person.
Run the Fill Employee Hierarchy process. This process creates an employee-populated representation of your approvals hierarchy and should be run whenever you make a structural or personnel change to your hierarchies or assignments. You can set up this process to run automatically at predefined intervals. See: Fill Employee Hierarchy Process.
When you make a change to an approval hierarchy-for example, by adding or removing an approver-existing documents still use the previous hierarchy before you changed it. Future documents use your changed hierarchy. Remember that every time you change a hierarchy, you must run the Fill Employee Hierarchy process.
If you are using position hierarchy approvals, and you move an employee out of a position that's in the approval hierarchy, assign another employee to the vacant position. You can remove a position altogether if it has no positions below it; you can also end-date the position or create a new version of the hierarchy. You can build a new version of a hierarchy by creating a new version of it or by copying an existing hierarchy.
If you are using employee/supervisor approvals, and you remove an employee or supervisor from an employee/supervisor chain, you must rebuild the employee/supervisor chain.
See: Change a Position Hierarchy.