Occasionally, you will attempt to approve a proposal for the final workflow state and it appears to function as expected except the proposal remains in the final state without actually approving. This will occur at both the selected course or program, or for linked courses within the proposal.
When this error happens to the item selected for the proposal, you may see a message along with the course/program title of the proposal that reads "...has been deleted or replaced. SmartCatalog recommends removing the item if it has been deleted from the catalog." This message is letting you know that the course or program that was originally selected to populate the form, has been either removed/deleted from the catalog or it has been updated with the Replace feature with a catalog item created from another proposal.
When a course or program are selected by a form to populate the fields when submitting a proposal, a link is forged between the proposal and the catalog item chosen via the GUID - individual identification number each catalog item has. This is one of the links checked prior to the proposal approving and creating the new catalog item for updating the catalog. These links are important as they verify the existence of the items that are linked to the proposal so it can create an accurate and functioning catalog item that includes these links and does not require manual editing. If the originally selected item is deleted from the catalog - this breaks the link and prevents the proposal from being fully approved. If the originally selected catalog item is replaced with another updated version, this also changes the GUID number of the item and prevents the proposal from approving as the link is broken.
Besides the items that are selected to populate the forms, there are requisite and course lists that are also forging links to other items for the finished catalog item. If these courses are replaced in the catalog with update items or deleted, those links are broken and they will need to be replaced on the proposal before a successful approval.
When these requisite or course list links break, you will receive a similar pop-up message and you can scroll down the proposal to see specific courses outlined in red, whether they are a course requirement (program form) or requisites (course form):
There are three different possibilities for this message when received for Requisites and Course Lists:
Issue 1:
A course that is linked to the proposal has been replaced within the catalog since the proposal was initially submitted.
When a program or a course is selected to populate a proposal, the information is pulled from the catalog at that moment. All courses in the catalog have a unique identifying number. When a course is replaced with an updated course item from Curriculum Management the identifying number changes because both versions of the course are treated as individual items within the catalog.
These need to be updated in order for the proposal to be approved because the version of the course that existed when the proposal was first initiated is no longer existing and has been replaced by an updated version.
To update these, you simply need to add the course from the Add Course buttons again, and remove the course outlined in red. Once you save, you can approve the proposal and it will be properly linked.
This is in place to avoid approving proposals that turn into catalog items with broken links within them.
Issue 2:
The course has been deleted from the catalog since the proposal was initially submitted.
If this is the case, the outlined course can simply be removed using the remove buttons on the proposal before it's saved/approved again.
Issue 3:
The course is a new proposed course that is still currently in the CM workflow and has not been approved yet.
If this is the issue, the proposed courses will need to be approved before the affected proposal can be approved.
This is in place to ensure the course links are made to the course items created from the approved proposal and not to the proposal itself.
Please note: If you are looking at multiple courses outlined in red, please keep in mind that it could be a combination of the issues mentioned above.
