Approval Processes

What is an Approval Process?

An approval process automates how records are approved in Salesforce. An approval process specifies each step of approval, including from whom to request approval and what to do at each point of the process. When you configure an approval process, you specify:

• The steps necessary for a record to be approved and who approves it at each step.
• The actions to take based on what happens during the approval process.

Sample Approval Processes

The Outbound Funds Package does not contain any approval processes out of the box. There are several approval processes that could be created to track approvals for business as well as audit purposes. Below are some examples that could be created:

• Funding Request - track the needed approval for awarding a funding request
• Disbursements - track the needed approval for disbursing funds

Building an Approval Process

Creating an Approval Process will involve four main steps:

1. Understand Your Process
2. Understand and/or Build Fields in Salesforce
3. Build the Approval Process Base
4. Define Approval Steps

For more information on Approval Processes and how to create them, check out this Trailhead Trail.

Below are the detailed steps to create an Approval Process on the Funding Request object:

1. Understand Your Process
   Before configuring your process, define the details and steps of the approval process with your stakeholders. A few questions that you will want to answer:

   1. Who submits a record for approval?
   2. Under what circumstances should a record be submitted for approval?
   3. How should the approvers be notified?
   4. Who needs to be included in the approval process?
   5. What are the approval steps?
   6. What are the criteria for each approval step?
   7. What needs to be updated or happen when the record is approved or rejected?
      
      You may want to both write this process in narrative form as well as map out the process in a flow chart. Also we suggest reviewing the considerations provided by Salesforce for starting to build the process in Salesforce. Be sure you build and test your approval process in a sandbox before building it in your production environment.

2. Understand and/or Build Fields in Salesforce

   1. There is a Lookup Relationship on the Funding Program to the User object to track the “Funding Program Manager”.
   2. If you want to reference that “Funding Program Manager” User in Approval Processes for the Funding Request, or Disbursement object, you will need to create a new Lookup relationship on those objects to the User.
      1. Go to Setup > Object Manager > Funding Requests > Fields & Relationships.
      2. Click on New.
      3. Step 1: Select Lookup Relationship as the Data Type on Step 1.
      4. Step 2: Choose the related object: Select User.
      5. Step 3: Add fields label, name, description and Help text for the field.
      6. Step 4: Select the Security/Visibility of the field.
      7. Step 5: Add the field to the appropriate page layout.
      8. Click Save.
   3. Once you have created the needed lookup field/relationship, you can use Process Builder to create a process to populate the User field on the Funding Request object with the “Funding Program Manager” from the related Funding Program record.
   4. Repeat steps b and c to reference the “Funding Program Manager” on the Disbursement object.
   5. Instead of referencing and populating the “Funding Program Manager” from the Funding Program with a process, you can also create the Lookup Relationship field (per step b) and then manually populate it on each Funding Request and Disbursement record, if a manual process is preferred.

3. Build the Approval Process Base
   We recommend that you use the Salesforce Wizard for creating approval processes, which will walk you through each step.

   1. To begin, click the Setup icon, then click Setup​.
   2. From Setup, type Approval in the Quick Find Box and click on Approval Processes in the left hand menu. (You can also click through Create > Workflow & Approval > Approval Processes in the left hand menu).
   3. Use the ‘Manage Approval Process For’ dropdown to select the object on which the approval process will be created. In this case, select either Funding Request or Disbursement.
   4. Click on the ‘Create New Approval Process” and select ‘Use Standard Setup Wizard’. (Note: You can click on ‘Use Jumpstart Wizard’ which is an abbreviated process, but then you will need to remember to review the rest of the approval steps and update as needed.)
      Step 1: Enter Name and Description (Click Next)
      Step 2: Specify Entry Criteria. This tells the system what criteria the record must meet to be submitted for review and approval.
      
      Step 3: Specify Approver Field and Record Editability Properties In this step add any automated approvals that should occur. Also update the Editability of the record during approvals. (Note: you can leave the Next Automated User blank, if you prefer to determine all steps and approvers in the detailed set up later.)
      Step 4: Select Notification Template Select the email template that will be used to notify approvers that an approval request has been assigned to them. This template will be used for all steps for the process. If you would like to set up Approval in Chatter, please review the article “Let Users Respond to Approval Requests from Chatter.”
      Step 5: Approval Page Layout In this step, you select the layout of the Approval page. This is where you determine what approver will see when reviewing a record. Select appropriate fields. This is also where you select the security setting. Our recommendation is to leave as-is with the default settings.
      Step 6: Select Initial Submitters In this step, you select what users are allowed to submit Funding Requests for Approval. You will want to review your process written in the first step above to determine who should be able to submit Funding Requests for Approval.
      Click Save. Now you will need to make the choice if you would like to continue on with defining the specific approval Steps or if you want to return later to complete the set up. If you would like to continue select, “Yes, I’d like to create an approval step now.” and click Go.

4. Define Approval Steps Approval steps are levels or steps in the approval process. For example, a Funding Request may always need to be approved by the Funding Program Manager and if the value of the Funding Request is over $25,000 the Funding Request also needs to be approved by the President of the Foundation.
   Step 1: Enter Name and Description (Click next after each of these steps).
   Step 2: Specify Step Criteria Enter the criteria to enter this Approval Step. The criteria determine what records will go through this step. By selecting “All records should enter this step,” every record submitted for approval will go through this step. If there are exceptions, then you should select the second option and enter the specific criteria.
   Step 3: Assigning Step Approver This is where you will select who should be the approver for this step. If you set up a lookup to the user on the Funding Request above, this is where you would reference that field, by selecting Related User and the field that you created.
   Step 4: Add Actions Click Save and you have another decision to make - you can either add actions, like field updates and task creation when the record is approved or rejected, or you can go to the approver process and continue to add Approval Steps.
   If you selected “No, I’ll do this later. Take me to the approval process detail page…” you will now have the option to add additional steps and actions as needed to build out your Approval Process. (Click on new buttons in appropriate related lists).
   When you are ready, click on Activate at the top of the page to test and use this approval process.