Switching the State of an Object when an Approval Request is Rejected

By default, an object's lifecycle state is not changed when an approval request is rejected. For example, let's say that object ABC is in the "Tested" state and an approval request is submitted to switch object ABC to the "Production" state. If the approval request is rejected, object ABC stays in the "Tested" state. For some approval work-flows, however, you might want to switch objects to a particular state when they are rejected. To do this you use the Reject State parameter.

Important:

If you use this option, make sure that the lifecycle model provides a transition from the state(s) that an object might be in when the approval policy executes and the state that you specify in the Reject State parameter. Otherwise, the approval engine will not be able to switch the target object to the specified state when a rejection occurs.

Also be aware that you can specify only one state in the Reject State parameter. Therefore, if an approval policy applies to objects with different lifecycle models, the Reject State can apply to only one of those models. For example, let's say you use the same approval policy for both XML schema and services, but these two asset types follow different lifecycle models. If you set the Reject State to a state in the lifecycle model for XML schema, only XML schema will switch to this state when an approval request is rejected. Services, when rejected, will simply remain in their current state. If you want to specify one reject state for XML schema and another for services, you must create a separate approval policy for each type.