The Infamous “Order is not eligible for booking. Check workflow status.”

July 5th, 2007

If you’re reading this article you probably did a Google search for this error message in hopes of finding a solution.   Well, you may have come to the right place…

This error is encountered after booking an order and appears to have no rhyme or reason.   Usually what happens is one or several of the users receive the message but then I’m unable to replicate or identify the steps to reproduce the error.   This makes it extremely difficult to troubleshoot.

I’ve posted several TAR’s with Oracle in the hopes of identifying a root cause but have come up short every time.   The analyst provides a data fix to reinitiate the workflow but no root cause

identification.   And if you search the forums you’ll find dozens of other people looking for a solution to the problem – only to come up short again.   At least you know you’re not alone.

However, while many situations may trigger this error, I’ve been able to narrow down at least one scenario that consistently reproduces the issue.   And if you’re lucky it may also be the culprit to your problem.

The first thing to note about standard Sales Order entry form is the behavior of the “Main” and “Line Items” tabs.   As soon as you click the “Line Items” tab, the form validates the header-level information under the “Main” tab and attempts to reserve an order number (if you’re using auto-numbering) and initiate the header-level workflow activities.

Sometimes after entering the header-level information and navigating to the “Line Items” tab, seeded validation constraints will kick in and reverts you back to the “Main” tab to make the necessary corrections.   This is fine and usually doesn’t cause problems.   However, what I have found is that certain custom security constraints or form personalizations that prevent navigation to the “Line Items” tab appear to interfere with the initiate of the header-level workflow that leads to the “Order is not eligible for booking.   Check workflow status.”

In my case, I had a form personalization that was intended to validate the order lines to require the project and task fields.   This personalization would periodically trigger when clicking the “Line Items” tab, prompt the custom error message, then revert back to the “Main” tab.   This apparently was the root cause to why the header-level workflow wasn’t initiating.

So the fix I applied was an additional condition in the personalization to ensure an item number was entered before requiring entry of the project and task fields.   This prevented the message from periodically triggering upon entry to the line items block.

While the fix sounds easy, it took awhile to figure out that this personalization was the reason behind the error.   As I said before, there could be several scenarios that trigger the infamous “Order is not eligible for booking.   Check workflow status.” For example, a direct customization to the workflow, which in this case has nothing to do with how the form behaves. But hopefully this provided a little more insight and helps you identify a root cause.

Entry Filed under: Order Management, Technical