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Considerations for Setting Approvers in Classic Approval Processes
When you specify approvers for a given approval step—or for the only step if you’re using the jump start wizard—keep these considerations in mind.
Required Editions
| Available in: both Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience |
| Available in: Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions |
Important Try Flow Approval Processes, a modern alternative to Classic Approval Processes. This
new feature provides a more flexible, user-friendly flow-based interface, and it can trigger
on record changes, supporting Apex extensibility and detailed logging for compliance and
audit trails. It supports dynamic routing based on data and business rules, unlike Classic
Approval Processes, which are tied to specific objects and offer limited support for
processes by using conditions. With Flow Approval Processes, you can monitor submitted
records and quickly identify bottlenecks, giving you unprecedented visibility into approval
workflows. And, like Classic Approval Processes, Flow Approval Processes don’t consume
automation credits or orchestration runs.
- Users with these permissions can respond to approval requests, even if they aren’t
designated approvers.
- Modify All Data
- Modify All Records for an object
- Make sure that the assigned approver has access to read the records for the approval requests. For example, a user who can’t view expense records can’t view expense approval requests.
- Classic approval processes that let users select an approver manually also let users select themselves as the approver.
- You can assign an approval request to the same user multiple times in a single step. However, Salesforce sends the user only one request.
- In Lightning Experience, when an approval request has more than one assigned approver, a
ProcessInstanceStep is created for each assigned approver. When the
approval request has the Approval based on first response setting enabled, the values
displayed in Assigned To and Actual Approver are affected.
- Assigned to is set to an approver assigned to the record
- Actual Approver is set to the approver who approved the request
- Here’s what happens to the list of approvers after a record enters an approval step and
the classic approval process later returns to that step.
- If the user who responded isn’t in the designated approvers list and has either Modify All Data or Modify All Records permissions for the object, that user replaces the original approver in the list of approvers.
- If a user who responded is in the designated approvers list, the list of approvers for that step doesn’t change. This behavior occurs even if the field values that designate the approvers have changed.
If... The Designated Approver Is... The user’s manager originally responded to the approval request. The manager The user’s manager originally responded to the approval request. Since then, the user’s manager has changed. The original manager
The new manager isn’t a designated approver for this step.
A user with Modify All Data permissions originally responded to the approval request. The user with Modify All Data permissions
That user replaces the user’s manager in the list of designated approvers for this step.
- A manager's manager is not an option for a designated approver.
Assigning Approval Steps to Queues
You can assign approval requests to a queue only if the associated object supports queues. Email approval response isn’t supported for classic approval processes that assign approval to a queue. You can assign an approval request to only one queue.
When the assigned approver is a queue:
- Any queue member can approve or reject an approval request that is assigned to the queue.
- Approval request emails are sent to the queue email address. If the queue is set up to send email to members, approval request emails get sent to the queue members, unless their approval user preferences are set to never receive approval request emails.
- Because email notifications to a queue aren’t intended for an external audience, {!ApprovalRequest.External_URL} returns the equivalent internal URL.
- Salesforce mobile app notifications for approval requests aren’t sent to queues. For each approval step involving a queue, we recommend adding individual users as assigned approvers, so at least those individuals can receive the approval request notifications in the Salesforce mobile app. To have both queues and individual users as assigned approvers, select Automatically assign to approver(s) instead of Automatically assign to queue in the approval step.
- When an approval request is rejected and returned to the previous approver and the previous approver was a queue, the approval request is assigned to the user who approved it instead of the queue.
- The Approval History related list displays the queue name in the Assigned To column and the actual user who approved or rejected the approval request in the Actual Approver column.
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