If you or your Functional HR Team worked with any of the PeopleSoft eApplications such as ePerformance, eCompensation, eProfile, or eDevelopment, then you know the frustration of making changes or customizations to the workflow. Well, in HCM 9.0 all of that just became easier.

PeopleSoft introduced the Approval Workflow Engine (AWE) in HCM version 9.0. It was partially there in version 8.9, however, it was not accessible via a menu. It was first created within SCM and eProcurement but later adapted to the HCM product line. And, its extremely powerful and versitile.

The AWE is basically an engine that provides capabilities for creating, running, and managing approval processes within PeopleSoft. Approval workflows are triggered when employees, managers or users, submit a transaction, such as a Salary Increase. When the user submits the transaction, the application hands the transaction over to the Approval Workflow Engine. The AWE will determine the appropriate approval process definition and then launch the approval workflow.

The best part of the AWE is not the technology behind it, rather the ability for functional users to make modifications without the need of a technical developer. Three levels of users are able to either develop, configure, or use transaction approvals. For example, the process of submitting a salary change and getting it approved requires defining who will approve the promotion, the order in which they will approve it, and how it will be routed to approvers.

Prior to 9.0 and the AWE, standard PeopleSoft workflow required advanced technical skills in PeopleSoft PeopleTools to create or customize. With the AWE you now have an alternative to standard workflow creation and maintenance. Workflow using the AWE is much easier to create, configure, and maintain.

All of the steps in approval workflow are defined using PeopleSoft pages and not PeopleSoft PeopleCode. Therefore, functional users can design and maintain workflow using these online PeopleSoft pages instead of requiring technical developers to create workflow rules. This is a huge Win for the Functional Team!