Business Scenario
Consider a customer complaint management process where:
- A service agent creates a case.
- Complaints above a certain financial impact require manager approval.
- The approving manager is not necessarily the processor or owner of the case.
- The approver should be maintained directly on the case using a dedicated party role such as Business Approver.
Using a custom party role allows organizations to clearly separate:
- Operational responsibility
- Approval responsibility
- Escalation responsibility
Configuration Steps
Step 1: Define the Custom Party Role
- Go to Party Roles configuration.
- Create a new party role with a meaningful code and description — for example,
Z_APPROVER_L1with label “Line 1 Approver.” - Define whether the role is fulfilled by an internal employee or an external business partner, and configure the appropriate cardinality (single or multiple).
Step 2: Pick Case Type & Add the Custom Party Role to the Case Party Schema
- Navigate to Case Type Configuration (for ESM, this is typically under the Case Type setup in the Business Configuration).
- Select the relevant Case Type for which this approval role applies.
- In the Party Schema section, add the newly created custom party role.
- Define its visibility and whether it is a required or optional entry on the case.
Step 3: Populate the Party Role on Cases
- Manually by the agent in the case UI – Assign via Involved Parties
- Automatically via an External Hooks, Autoflow determination rule that populates the role based on other case attributes (e.g., category, account, region)
Step 4: Configure the Autoflow Approval Rule
- Navigate to Autoflow Configuration in the Administration workbench.
- Create or edit an Autoflow rule scoped to the Case object.
- Define the trigger condition (e.g., case status moves to “Pending Approval,” or a specific case category is set).
- In the Actions section, add a Send Approval Request or Send Notification action.
- For the Recipient, select Role-Based Recipient and choose the custom party role (e.g.,
APPROVER_L1). - The system will resolve the recipient at runtime by looking up who is assigned to that role on the specific case instance.
Conclusion
Custom party roles provide a powerful mechanism for implementing business-specific approval scenarios in SAP Sales & Service Cloud Version 2. By introducing a dedicated Business Approver role on the Case object and integrating it with Enterprise Service Management (ESM) approval workflows, organizations can achieve flexible approval routing, better governance, and improved transparency.
This approach eliminates the dependency on standard ownership fields and enables approvals to be driven directly by business responsibilities, making it particularly useful for complaint handling, exception approvals, escalations, and other controlled service processes.
By combining Case Party Roles with ESM Approval Processes, you can build scalable and maintainable approval frameworks that align closely with your organization's service governance model.
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