Requirements:
We have a list, where users can fill in a request to increase the quota of their site. The governance has decided that the IT department is responsible for the capacity, hence they need to be the approver of this request.
When a request has been approved, it should receive a unique approval number. The rest of the process is not relevant for this blog post.

Solution:
By using a combination of the ‘created date’ and the list item ID we can create a unique number. It was not required to use sequential number (was even preferred not to do this)

Setup:
In the custom list there are a lot of columns, but these are the once I have used to calculate a unique value for the approval number

Workflow variables:

ApprovalCalc : Text
ApprovalNumber: Number

Actions

In Nintex I created a Math Operation. It is configured to do “(Listlookup Current Item Approvalpart1) + (Listlookup Current Item ID)”.
This will result in having a number that is formed by  the number of days of the creation date (based on December 31 1899 being value 1) added with the itemID.
This value will be stored in the ApprovalCalc variable.
Then we have a build dynamic string action that build a string “STS- {WorkflowVariable:ApprovalCalc} and stored this value in the ApprovalNumber variable. (IT people wanted to have a prefix STS-).
The next action updates a list item called Approval_Number with the value of the ApprovalNumber variable and then other actions like sending emails and creating tasks is executed.

 

The problem I had was that when I assigned a condition that would check if the Approval Status equals Approved. But this doesn’t work when you use this condition, it will be skipped, because internally SharePoint uses a number for the workflow status.

Also, if you Edit in Datasheet (your list or Library) you can see the numbers is stead of the text.

Here is an overview:

So, I need to modify my workflow like : If Approval Status Equals 16, ….

The same policy applies when you would like to have a view where you display items based on their Approval Workflow Status.

This list is partially copied from David Wise blog