2385219 - Documents Under Approval Cannot Be Closed or Canceled or Copied

Symptom

A marketing document cannot be canceled or closed. The Copy To option is disabled (greyed out).

Reproducing the issue

Prerequisite:

Approval procedures are enabled.

Scenario:

1. Create an approval stage where user John is the Authorizer and No. of Approvals Required is 1.
2. Create an approval template with the following details:
   The Active and Active when Updating Documents options are both selected.
   On the Originator tab set a user Mike.
   On the Documents tab, select Sales Order.
   On the Stages tab, set the stage defined in step 1.
   For Terms, select When the Following Applies: Total Document Greater Than 500.
3. John (Authorizer) creates a sales order.
4. Mike (Originator) alters the sales order created by John so that the document total is over 500. An approval procedure is triggered and an approval request is sent.
5. John (Authorizer) opens the sales order he created in step 3 and with a right-click he tries either to close or to cancel the document.

Actual behavior:

The sales order cannot be canceled or closed and one of following errors occurs:

Cannot cancel documents awaiting approval  [Message 3622-7]
or
Cannot close documents awaiting approval   [Message 3622-8]

The Copy To option is disabled (greyed out). When you click the Copy To option, the following error occurs:

You cannot create new documents based on a document awaiting approval  [Message 3622-13]

Cause

Functionality description

Solution

This is correct system behavior. When a document has been changed and the modified version is awaiting approval, the original version of the document cannot be canceled, closed or copied to any target document.

'Awaiting approval' means that the updated version has one of following statuses:

• Pending 
  The Authorizershould either approve or not approve (reject) the document. 
• Approved, but not executed yet
  Either the Authorizeror the Originator can update the approved draft. The changes are applied to the (original) document which can now be either canceled, or closed, or copied to a target document.
• Not Approved (Rejected) 
  The Originator might update the rejected draft so that a new approval procedure is triggered. The previous approval procedure is closed by the system. The original version of the document is pending.
  The Originator might update the rejected draft so that an approval procedure is NOT triggered. The changes are applied to the (original) document, which can now be canceled, or closed, or copied to a target document.
  The Originator does not intend to process further the rejected draft. To free the original version of the document, the approval procedure has to be canceled by either the Authorizer or the Originator.

To cancel an approval procedure, go to the Approval Status Report, right-click the document to be cancelled, choose Cancel and then Update.