Checking why an Endevor package has got its approver groups related during cast

Products

• Endevor

Issue/Introduction

If package approval is required onsite, the CAST action sets the Endevor package to status IN-APPROVAL with a number of approver groups which have to give their approval for the package processing to continue.

Normally the expected approver group(s) will be assigned by Endevor.

If the set of related approver groups doesn't match the expectations, is there any way to check why Endevor has assigned these specific groups?

Resolution

The package file contains element ID records which, for each action included in the package, specify whether the source and/or the target inventory area affected by the action requires approval. If this is the case, the approver groups related with that inventory area will be related to the package.

Apart from this built-in processing, a before-cast package exit may add approver groups to the package even though they are not related to any inventory area affected by any action in the package.

Therefore, to find why a package has got its set of approver groups, the first step will be to check its element ID records

These records may be extracted using the LIST PACKAGE ACTION SUMMARY from the CSV utility. Columns APPR REQ (S) and APPR REQ (T) specify whether the action requires approval for the source or target location respectively.

Note the suffix (S) or (T) in the column name. It identifies whether the column refers to the source or to the target location. The columns that identify the inventory location with either suffix are:

• LOC (x) - Only applies when it is 'C' meaning an Endevor location. Locations like F (file) or P (USS path) will never raise the need for any approval
• ENV NAME (x)
• SYS NAME (x)
• TYPE NAME (x)
• STG # (x) or STG ID (x)

Once the locations requiring approval for this package have been identified, the LIST APPROVER GROUP JUNCTION of the CSV utility may be used to find out the approver groups that are related with the inventory areas that require approval for the package. All these groups will be related to the package during CAST action.

Finally, the LIST PACKAGE APPROVER GROUP function of the CSV utility (or the panels) may be used to view the approver groups that were effectively related to the package during CAST. Any group not deriving from approvals required by the actions (and therefore identified by the above steps) must have been added by a package exit at the BEFORE-CAST point.

Unfortunately there is no way to distinguish approver groups added by the before-cast exit from those deriving from the actions in the package once the package is cast. To ascertain whether an user exit is adding a particular approver group, you'd need to take an exit trace for the CAST action

Additional Information

CSV utility section in Endevor documentation