Hi Niki
When the user Releases outside the WF, check SWEL (first switch on the trace using SWELS) for the events triggered.
use that event in your workflow in a parallel fork (1 of 2 fork) . One branch of the WF should do the normal approval process + the deadline monitoring and the other fork branch should wait for that event. Remember to have an instance of the BO (of the event) in your wf and bind the _EVT_OBJCET back to the WF (to that BO instance)...else the wait for event will not work.
But there is a catch here..... I am sure the same event will get triggered when releasing from within the WF as the transaction remains same; then both branches of the fork will be running against each other to complete the fork (the approval branch via the normal approval process and the wait event branch via the event from release). So, keep your steps which are AFTER the approval outside of the Fork.
Regards,
Modak