More often than not we might have encountered requirements that although the a person belongs to a particular reporting chain, instead of expenses/project time sheet approvals being routed to the direct manager/reporting chain, to route it to either a project manager or a different manager altogether. In earlier versions of Dynamics AX we used to rely on different conditions (based on department codes or cost center codes etc.) to route to different managers.
Seems like Microsoft has come up with a pretty neat and cool solution in Dynamics 365 for operations.
Let us take an example of invoice journal (too lazy to configure expense management from scratch, found a handy example to use).
As a hierarchy I report to the below position (highlighted in green). However there is another relation (highlighted in blue) which says matrix and reports to is a different than the usual reports to.
The person associated with my reports to position is below:
The person assigned under the matrix hierarchy is below.
On the vendor invoice journal workflow within the approval node, besides the usual Managerial Hierarchy option, you can see an additional option of “Configurable Hierarchy”.
After the workflow has been modified/completed and saved, on workflow grid you can see options below:
Click on the “Associate hierarchy” and there would be a separate dialog that opens up. You can choose either Matrix or Project. These are besides the Managerial (Line) Hierarchy which you assign within the workflow and are of the same type i.e., Position Hierarchy.
After this association, I have submitted an AP Invoice journal, which is routed to Ajit Srivastava instead of Charlie Carson to whom I’m directly reporting to.
This configuration can be made any of the workflows like Expense, Project and various ones where these kinds of approvals are more commonly used.
Dynamics AX Blog by Vamsi Pranith 
What is the purpose of the condition where you say “Employee.Line Manager Level = 1”
A little background. I am trying to create a succession of approvals depending on the approval amount and the signing limits. My goal is that if the approval limit exceeds the signing limit, that it will kick to the next person in the hierarchy who does have the appropriate signing limit. Conversally, if the person does have that authority to sign, then the workflow should stop. So far with the setups I have tried, I cannot prevent the workflow from moving up the chain.
Thanks in advance
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When you say Employee.Line Manager Level = 1, it stops at your immediate manager. Meaning to anyone whomever you are reporting is where it would stop. For your you should be using the stop condition as “Employee.Purchase requisition/Purchase order. Approval Limit >= Approval amount on the document (Purchase requisition/Purchase order).
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Hi, what if I say “Employee.Line Manager Level = 2”? I would expect the work items to be created (based on the hierarchy setup) at the manager of my manager (those are the 2 levels). Is my assumption right?
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Yes that is right.
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