General release information
Release 1.12.6 (SuiteApp version 1.12.598, 1.12.600) was released on the 18th of March 2025 and contains one enhancement and a couple of bug fixes. Below you can find more information related to the enhancement and bug fixes. We will update your Production account automatically and the Sandbox account can be updated from your (the customer's) end at any given time.
Enhancements
FFA-1674 Email alias support
In this version release the option to utilise 'Approval by email' with two different email addresses has been enabled.
A new field named ‘Email Alias’, has been added to the employee record. This field allows users to set an alternative email address for approval routing. By default, the email plugin validates approval responses received only from the original email address stored in the 'Email' field of the employee record. With the addition of this alias, the plugin will validate any of the provided email addresses and process approval or rejection requests accordingly.
Please note, it is expected that auto-forwarding is enabled to the alternative email address (an approval request will only be sent to the email address recorded in the 'email' field). This enablement will ensure that users can easily 'reply to' the dedicated ZoneApprovals email plugin. Otherwise, a user would have to manually copy the address of the plugin to send the approval by email response. Additionally, in case of forwarding the email manually (auto-forwarding is off), please note that the email subject will become part of the email body. As the subject contains "#", it will capture the subject as a 'long' approval or rejection reason (stored on the dedicated approval log).
Bug Fixes
FFA-1627 Filter out inactive employee records when part of a group
A problem was reported by a customer where an approval log conversion failed with the email plugin defaulting to "COULD_NOT_FIND_EMPLOYEE" error.
Upon further investigation, it was identified that when an active employee record was set as part of a group, later in the lifetime inactivated, therefore the email plugin struggled identifying the inactive employee record, resulting in the above mentioned error.
We have implemented a filter that would identify inactive employee records when part of a group and exclude them from the approval logic. The system will now only use the active employee record for approval routing in group-based approvals.
FFA-1680 Zone Approvals configuration behaviour not respected - Transaction Auto-approve instead of Default approver
Another issue related to the above scenario is when the ZoneApprovals configuration is set to assign the Default Approver for transactions without a matrix applicable. Instead, transactions were auto-approved.
The root cause has been an inactive employee used within a group of approvers in a matrix. This problem is now fully removed too.
FFA-1685 Accrual postings do not respect locked periods
In previous version releases, accrual postings have been stabilised to respect closed accounting periods. This version release further enhances the behaviour by introducing a logic that would respect the postings of transactions generated in a locked accounting period too.
FFA-1691 Duplicate accruals created for transactions
In a user's account, the system failed to set the checkbox ACCRUALS CREATED = T, which is responsible to stop the accruals generation process. Accordingly, duplicate accruals have been generated. Since we can not only rely on this transaction body field, an additional check has been added within the generation logic that would check for an existing accrual connected to the transaction and stop execution if there is one. This enhancement further stabilises the Accruals feature.
FFA-1697 Approval reason is mandatory even though the preference is disabled in ZoneApprovals Configuration
The previous version release forced users to record an approval reason, even when the same was not configured as a preference in the main ZoneApprovals configuration. This version amends this behaviour reverting the existing logic.
FFA-1716 Approval by email is not sent if an approver is the first NetSuite employee (internal ID is negative)
We identified that NetSuite-generated employee records with negative IDs were also involved in transaction approval routing. ZoneApprovals was unable to send approval-by-email requests to these records, resulting in missed notifications for approvers with negative ID records.
To address this, we have modified the ‘Approval by Email’ logic, enabling the system to now successfully send approval requests via email to these employees, ensuring that all approvers, regardless of their employee record ID, receive the necessary notifications.