A Step-by-Step Guide to Approval Process in Salesforce

The approval process in Salesforce is one vital feature that automates the workflow of obtaining approvals from different records. It ensures all necessary approvals are easily acquired, giving teams an upper hand in managing their tasks.

Understanding the approval process within Salesforce will help the organization smooth out its operations. This article covers setting up and managing an approval process, enabling your team to work efficiently and make appropriate decisions.

What is the Salesforce Approval Process?

An approval process in Salesforce is just an automated procedure through which an organization can manage or control the approval of records before their finalization or any other particular action concerning the same. It encodes the process to ensure the proper application of business rules and that the right people review and approve the relevant records or changes.

It applies to many objects in Salesforce, from opportunities and quotes to expenses, among several custom objects. For instance, it may empower the business to have a series of steps through which the record progresses before approval. This could be anything from everybody having to look at it to business-based rules about parallel paths within the flow, such as different organizational structures.

Among the central benefits that one would attain in the approval process are that it offers:

• More accountability and transparency in the making of any decisions.
• More consistency in the business process for that particular business organization.
• Improved adherence to external laws and internal policies.
• Fewer errors and omissions in critical business operations.
• More efficiency through automation by replacing manual approval workflows.

How do you prepare for the approval process on Salesforce?

To ensure an efficient approval process in salesforce.com, one has to prepare and plan for its setting. That stage will make the approval process the kind you would want: effective, efficient, and fitted to your needs. To do this, follow these steps:

• Define your business needs: Be clear about what is to be approved, by whom, under what circumstances, and at which stage of the process. The stakeholders can consult the expectations about their requirements and expectations.
• Document Approval Flow: Flowchart. Once the process has been identified, usually by who, what, when, and why, draw out the flow of this process. A good starting point is to create a basic flowchart showing the steps and decisions.
• Approver Identification: Identify the relevant Approver for each process stage. Depending on how the organization structure is defined, this may be an individual, a role-based person, or, in some cases, a team.
• Approval Criteria: Conditions wherein a record should enter into a process for approval. These can be based on stated values from fields, types of records, and criteria.
• Notice Planning: It is necessary to clearly define how Approvers will become aware of pending approvals and how Submitters will know the status of their request for approval.
• Consider the rejection scenarios: Suppose the approver rejects a request. Will it be routed back to the submitter automatically for revisions and resubmission? Will it auto-decline?
• After defining the initial submission actions, it will be time to specify them on a record’s approval/rejection. This could be an update to some fields or even setting tasks, but it could be anything you can automate.
• Test Your Concept: Before you build it into Salesforce, you’ll want to process this manually and test that your approval process makes sense and accounts for all scenarios.

This information can help you prepare for salesforce interview questions.

How to Set Up Email Notification?

The most critical phase in this approval process is email notifications within Salesforce. It enables the approvers to update themselves with the pending approvals and the corresponding necessary actions. The steps that are to be followed are enumerated herein.

• Email Templates:

Log in to your Salesforce account.

Login into the Email Templates section. You may now create a new email template for approval notifications.

• Please provide the details, such as the case details, approval request details, and what action is required.
• Set up an Approval Process. Type ‘Approval Processes’ from within Setup and select this item. Now click the approval process for which you want to set it up.
• Setting Up Initial Submission Actions: Still within the approval process configuration, scroll down to the section titled “Initial Submission Action.” This section can add any actions initiated after a record is submitted for approval.
• Add Email Alert:

On the Initial Submission Actions, select “Add New”.

Click “Email Alert” from the list.

• Now, select the email template added in the step above and then select whom to add as a recipient—for instance, the Approver or the record owner—who may be interested in this notification.
• Create Approval and Rejection Actions: You will not need to configure email alerts. However, you can set weights for them during the approval process. This will ensure that relevant stakeholders receive timely information about the decision.
• Test Email Alerts: Check your email notifications. Submit a record. You should test that all of the email notifications are to work seamlessly with the email.

How to Create an Approval Process in Salesforce?

Creating an approval process in Salesforce is setting up an approach with different steps. Follow the subsequent in-depth tutorial on how to create a straightforward Approval Process within Salesforce:

• Be sure to log in to a Salesforce account now; click Setup from the menu bar at the top left of the screen toolbar.
• Create an approval process by going to Setup, typing “Approval Processes” in the Quick Find box, clicking the select list, and then selecting what item, such as Opportunity or Case, the approval process will be created.
• Create New Approval Process: Click “Create New Approval Process.” You can use either the Standard Setup Wizard or the Jump Start Wizard. Select the second option for a very detailed setup.
• Enter Process Details: Enter fields such as Process Name, Unique Name, and Description. This information will help the users identify the Approval Process in the future.
• Define the entry criteria that will initiate the process once it is approved. This could be based on field values and conditions.
• Define the entry criteria and establish the steps for approvals using the “New Approval Step.” Name the step, set the requirements, and add a description for the approver at that step.
• Define Initial Submission Actions: What must happen when a record is approved? This would typically consist of a notification or field update.
• Define Final Approval and Rejection Actions: Execute the events that shall be undertaken or incurred upon calling on the approval or rejection of a record. This could mean updating the record’s status, sending out notifications, or progressing in the workflows.
• Review and Save: After completing all the steps and actions, review the approval process settings and ensure that everything has been indicated correctly. Click “Save” to complete the approval process.
• Test the Approval Process: Before its implementation, test the approval workflow carefully by submitting a test record to see how it works.

If you want to learn more, consider taking a Salesforce course.

How to add Approval Steps?

Setting up the steps for the intelligent approval process in Salesforce is integral to its Configuration. Learn how to do this below.

• From your overall approach to the approval process, scroll down to where it says “Approval Steps.”
• Then, click “New Approval Step” to get started.
• Give the step a name and description, then set criteria if any apply. It will be settled when this step is used.
• Choose the Approver(s), which can be one or several users, roles, or related Users.
• Indicate if you would like this step automatically approved based on certain conditions.
• Define the rejection behaviour: What should occur if this step is rejected?
• Configuration of any actions when this step comes to approval or rejection.
• Save your step and adjust its position in the overall process order.

Salesforce Approval: How to Check Results

Monitoring and analyzing results from your approval processes in Salesforce will be critical to their effectiveness and optimization of improvement. The following are ways you can review approval process results.

• View Approval History

Record detail page > To the ‘Approval History’ related list.

Approval requests for a record and its current status, Approver, submitted and processed date.

• Use multicore and multiobject-type reports with custom report types that represent approvals.
• How to Use Process Instance Steps Monitor:

Create reports on the Process Instance Step object for details of the individual steps of an approval.

• Using Dashboard Components:

Create dashboard components for your center approval reports to get a graphical summary of the trends in what you are approving and its status.

• Monitor Your Approval Queue:

For example, Approvers may view all your appraisals from the Home tab in their queue.

• Use of Process Builder:

Build a process that will run when the approval process is complete. You could perform an added action or log in if need be.

• Implement Custom Tracking:

Add custom fields at places in your objects where the metrics of approval need to be tracked; then, via a workflow rule or a trigger, let that field get updated while an approval process flows through.

• Use Salesforce Analytics:

Through complex analysis, you can achieve fine-grained visualization and insight into your approval data using Salesforce Analytics.

Note that if you do not know how to delete an approval process in Salesforce, follow these steps: From Setup > Approval Processes, click on the object’s name to open the detail page for this approval process. If active, deactivate it and press Del next to the name.

Use Change Sets or the Metadata API to publish the approval process into Salesforce. When deploying it in Salesforce, package it up with related components so you have the same experience across environments.

If you are looking up free resources, check out the Salesforce tutorial.

Conclusion

Salesforce is a critical control tool that helps business operations achieve consistency and compliance. Through careful design, implementation, and monitoring, an organization can realize the tremendous performance of the approval process in enhancing workflow efficiency and decision-making accuracy. Please take a minute to revisit your prepared approval process to ensure it still serves the purpose of your business change.