Approval process

Approval process

An approval process is an automated process to validate records in Salesforce.

Each step of the approval process must meet specific needs of the organization, including who should be involved in the process, when and why. These steps can trigger the following actions:

• Who should submit for approval? The user submits his record for approval to start the process. To do so, he must click on the button “Submit for Approval“;
• What records should be submitted for approval? Record entry criteria must be specified in order to filter the records that should enter the approval process;
• Initial submission actions occur when a user first submits a record for approval. By default, the record is locked;
• Approval steps are then determined. A step corresponds to one or more criteria and one or more assigned approvers. On each step, a delegated approver can be appointed.

Once all the steps are added, it’s time to determine the actions that finalize the process: Final Approval Actions, Final Rejection Actions, and Recall Actions.(when a record is recalled or rejected, it is removed from the process but can be unlocked re-submitted for approval).

Example: In order to prevent users from entering high percentage discounts on opportunities, an approval process has been created so that hierarchical managers approve the records.

 NB: The types of actions available are very similar to traditional workflow rule actions: send an email, update a field, create a task, or send an outbound message.

 Attention: initial submission actions are not compulsory, 30 steps max per process. Once activated, the approval process steps can not be changed.