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Advanced Use Cases for Smart Approvals
Approval rules that use complex rule conditions with a mixture of smart and standard
approval conditions can cause unexpected results when a sales rep resubmits a record. When you
use smart approvals, take note of cases where unchanged conditions require reapproval or where
changed conditions don’t require reapproval. If your rule requires a complex logical statement
for its rule condition, we recommend spending time reviewing how different complex logical
statements can return true or false. (Salesforce CPQ Managed
Package)
Required Editions
| Available in: Salesforce CPQ Summer ’16 and later with Advanced Approvals 3.1 and later |
Remember that an approval rule can have standard conditions and smart conditions together. Let’s review how Advanced Approvals evaluates the approval resubmission process when you use mixed conditions together with complex conditional logic.
Rules with smart conditions can still require re-evaluation if a sales rep resubmits a record without changing any of the tested conditions. You often see this situation in rules with complex rule conditions and mixed condition types, where one smart condition moving from true to false isn’t enough to change the condition’s overall logical result. Let’s look at an example.
Your sales rep submits a quote under the following approval rule.
- Approval Rule
- Approver: Sales Manager
- Condition 1
- Opportunity Type = New
- Smart Approvals: Disabled
- Condition 2
- Service Discount > 15%
- Smart Approvals: Disabled
- Condition 3
- Subscription Discount > 15%
- Smart Approvals: Enabled
- Rule Condition: 1 AND (2 OR 3)
The quote meets all three conditions, which returns the logical statement true AND (true OR
true) = true. The statement returns true, so Advanced Approvals submits the quote to the Sales
Manager, who approves it. The sales rep then recalls the approval, changes a noncondition value,
and resubmits the quote.
Because Condition 3 is a smart approval, Advanced Approvals checks whether the tested value’s
original state and its new state are different. They aren't different, so Condition 3 now
returns false, and the new logical statement is true AND (true OR false) = true. The logic still
evaluates to True, so Advanced Approvals sends another approval request to the Sales
Manager.
When rules use mixed condition types, conditional logic can also cause a resubmitted approval not requiring reevaluation, even when a condition changes. Let’s look at an example.
Your sales rep submits a quote line under the following approval rule.
- Approval Rule
- Approver: Sales Manager
- Condition 1
- Quantity < 10
- Smart Approvals: Disabled
- Condition 2
-
- Additional Discount > 10%
- Smart Approvals = Enabled
The quote has a quantity of 9 and additional discount of 15%, which returns the logical
statement true OR false = true. The statement returns true, so Advanced Approvals submits the quote to the Sales
Manager, who approves it. The sales rep recalls the approval, changes a nonconditional value,
and then resubmits it.
Because condition 2 is a smart approval, Advanced Approvals checks whether the tested value’s
original state and its new state are different. They aren't different, so Condition 2 returns
false, and the new logical statement is true OR false = true. The logic still evaluates to True,
so Advanced Approvals sends another approval request to the Sales Manager, who approves it.
Finally, the sales rep recalls the quote a second time, changes the quantity to 11, and
resubmits it. The first condition returns false, and
because the tested value for our smart condition hasn’t changed, the second condition still
returns false. This configuration provides the logical
statement false OR false = false. Because the logic evaluates to
false, Advanced Approvals doesn’t send an approval request
to the sales manager.
Let’s review an approval rule that uses mixed conditions with a complex rule condition.
- Approval Rule
- Approver: Sales Manager
- Condition 1
- Opportunity Type = New
- Smart Approvals: Disabled
- Condition 2
- Service Discount > 15%
- Smart Approvals: Enabled
- Condition 3
- Subscription Discount > 15%
- Smart Approvals: Enabled
- Condition 4
- Net Total > $500,000
- Smart Approvals: Disabled
- Condition 5
- Customer Type = Partner
- Smart Approvals: Enabled
- Rule Condition: 1 AND (2 OR 3 OR 4 OR 5)
Your sales rep submits a quote where conditions 1 and 2 are true, while the remaining
conditions are false. This configuration provides a logical statement of true AND (true OR false OR false OR false) = true, so Advanced
Approvals submits the quote to the Sales Manager, who approves it. The sales rep recalls the
quote, changes several nonconditional fields, and resubmits it.
Because none of the smart conditions changed their tested fields, conditions 2, 3, and 5
return false. This configuration provides a logical statement of true AND (false OR false OR false OR false) = false, so Advanced Approvals doesn’t
resubmit the approval.
However, what happens if the resubmitted quote met conditions 1, 2, and 4? In this case, your
logical statement is true AND (true OR false OR true OR false). This statement evaluates to
true, so Advanced Approvals sends the quote to the
Approval Manager.
