Review and approval workflow for list

Question

I'm making an workflow with two steps on reviewing.

Fist step after a list item is included.

The reviewer will verify the item and choose to accept or reject.

If he rejects, the item is rejected and the workflow stops.

If he accepts, the item is accepted and then set back to pending so the approver will be able to accept it again.

Accepting and then setting back to pending sounds like a bad practice. What I would want to know is how to set it as approved by the reviewer without really setting it to approved for the public.

Answer 1

Well, I have learned where I was going wrong.

Since it's Sharepoint 2013's workflow, there is no such thing as a Start approval proccess, but there is the Assign task.

Adding this action and setting it to some person/group will let you continue using the Approve/Reject buttons on the task itself, not changing the item.

Then using the value returned by the task in a conditional would let me choose where to go next.

Answer 2

I think what you want is the start approval process action in Designer.

1. Turn on content approval for submitted items under versioning settings. Set "who should see draft items" to only users who can approve items" (this is the default).
2. Add action to your workflow, "Start approval process." This is basically like running an approval process inside your workflow. It's got a lot of steps and I'll be here to answer your questions as they come up.
3. Click on "these users" to set who the approvers will be, in what order, and whether it's sequential or parallel. It sounds like the default settings will be fine for you, but if not, you can click on "Approval" to customize the tasks and actions.
4. After you've added the Start Approval Process step, in the line before that action, set the variable "Cancel on Rejection" to Yes. That will insure the workflow ends if an approver rejects it.
5. By default, this approval process will set content approval to Yes and non-approval members will be able to see the changed document only once everyone has approved.

There's no need to set it back to pending unless the content changes. This will happen automatically through the content approval settings.

Answer 3

I'd be moving away from the idea that the reviewer approves the item, and then it gets set back to pending so that the approver can approve.

Really all that need to happen is that the reviewer approves the task that is assigned to them. Once they do that that, the approver should also get a task, which once approved then the item is set to approved. At any point if there is a rejection then the workflow would stop.

Have you taken a good look at the out of the box approval workflows? I'd be surprised if they don't meet your needs based on your information.