Salesforce Approval Processes
What Is Approval Processes?
An approval process automates a multi-step sign-off workflow -- routing a record to one or more approvers in sequence, locking specific fields while pending, and taking defined actions once approved or rejected.
Why It Matters
Discount approvals, expense requests, and contract sign-off all follow the same underlying pattern: someone submits, someone else reviews, and the outcome triggers a next action. Doing this manually through email loses the audit trail. An approval process keeps the entire history attached to the record itself.
How to Set It Up
Go to Setup, search for "Approval Processes", and select the object the process applies to.
Define the entry criteria -- which records should even be eligible (e.g. discount over 20%).
Set up the approver -- a specific user, the record owner's manager, or a queue -- and whether multiple steps are needed for larger requests.
Configure field updates that should happen automatically on submission (locking the record) and on final approval or rejection.
Activate the process, then submit a test record through the full approval and rejection paths before rolling it out.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
A common early mistake is forgetting to lock the record on submission, which lets the submitter keep editing it while it's sitting in someone else's approval queue -- creating confusion about which version was actually approved. Also common: no defined path for what happens if an approver is out of office, leaving requests stuck indefinitely.
Next Step
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