Creating an Approval Process

A process definition serves as the framework for your approval process, providing options for setting up key objects like entry criteria, email templates, and approval summary pages. 

Entry criteria define the conditions that must be met before an object record is routed through the approval process. For instance, you may want to specify that a certain approval process for agreements is only used when a discount of greater than 10% is given. While everyone may have a Salesforce dashboard set up to display outstanding tasks, having email templates associated with the approval process ensures that people are notified outside of Salesforce when they are required to approve an item, helping ensure the approval process does not stall.

Approval summary pages contain the information and action items that enable a record to be reviewed and approval actions to be taken. The default summary pages provide sufficient information for agreements, opportunities, quotes/proposals, proposal line items, and term exceptions; however, the pages can be configured to provide whatever details are needed.

You can do the following using the Approval Processes tab:

• Create Rule-Based Approval Process or Ad Hoc Approval Process

• Specify the submit, approve, and reject actions.
• Specify email templates.
• Specify fields to be displayed in the approval request of an object record.

To create a rule-based approval process

1. From the main menu, select Conga Approvals Setup and click the Approval Processes tab. A list of all active and inactive approval processes is displayed.

2. Set up a new rule-based approval process.

3. Select the Entry Criteria which indicates when the approval process starts.

4. To override the default approval summary page and my approvals page, enter the approval summary Visualforce page name and the My Approvals Visualforce page (where the approver indicates whether they approve or reject the item) and click Next. You can leave these fields blank to use the default pages. No auto-lookup is available for this. You must enter the exact name of the page to change the setting. The default pages are:

   • OpportunityApprovalSummary

   • AgreementApprovalSummary

   • QuoteApprovalSummary QuoteLineItemApprovalSummary

   • AgreementTermExApprovalSummary

5. Specify the backup admin user. From the Backup Admin Approver settings, search and select a user who can act as the backup admin for a specific process and click Next. If an approver is deleted or is inactive, an approval request is sent by default to a backup admin. If you do not select one, the global backup admin user is used.

6. Click Save.

A rule-based approval process is created.

To create an ad hoc approval process

1. From the main menu, select Conga Approvals Setup and click the Approval Processes tab. A list of all active and inactive approval processes are displayed.

2. Set up a new ad hoc approval process.

   

   Important

   You must have an existing active rule-based approval process for an ad hoc approval process to work.

3. Specify the consolidation settings.

4. Select Custom Email Notification Templates.

5. Specify the backup admin user. From the Backup Admin Approver settings, search and select a user who can act as the backup admin for a specific process. If an approver is deleted or is inactive, an approval request is sent by default to a backup admin. If you do not select a backup admin, the global backup admin user is used.

6. Select Comment settings.

7. Set up fields to be displayed on the My Approvals page.

8. Set up auto reapproval settings.

9. Click Save.

An ad hoc approval process is created.

Setting Up a Rule-Based Approval Process

1. Click Create Approval Process.
2. Use Manage Approval Processes for to select one of the following objects for which the approval is triggered and click Create New Approval Process.
   • Agreement
   • Agreement Line Item
   • Agreement Term Exception
   • Line Item
   • Opportunity
   • Product Configuration
   • Proposal Line Item
   • Quote
   • Quote/Proposal
3. Select Rule Driven Process to create a rule-based approval process. Specify entry criteria which when satisfied, triggers the approval process. For example, you can trigger an approval for all agreements having a Total Agreement value more than 5000 dollars.
4. Type a mandatory Process Name and provide a Description for the approval process.
5. Click Next.

Setting Up an Ad Hoc Approval Process

1. From the main menu, select Conga Approvals Setup, select Approval Processes.
2. Use Manage Approval Processes for to select one of the following objects for which the approval is triggered and click Create New Approval Process.
   • Agreement
   • Agreement Line Item
   • Agreement Term Exception
   • Line Item
   • Opportunity
   • Product Configuration
   • Proposal Line Item
   • Quote
   • Quote/Proposal
3. Select Ad Hoc Process to create your own approval process with the ability to select approvers/reviewers and decide their sequence of actions while viewing the object record.
4. Enter the mandatory Process Name and provide a Description for the approval process.
5. Click Next.

Specifying Consolidation Settings

Consolidation applies to scenarios when a user is responsible for multiple approval items for a single document. In this scenario, you can use the Consolidated Notification and Approvals options to avoid sending separate approval notifications to the approver for each approval item. Consolidated Notification is the capability to send single approval email notifications to the approver for all the header or line item approvals, when all the approval items become available for approval. This enables approvers to review all their approval items for a document as a whole, rather than revisiting the same document multiple times. When all the items become available, the system changes the status of all the approval items to Assigned and then you are allowed to independently Approve or Reject the assigned approval items. You can navigate to the My Approvals page (provides the list of all the approval items for the user for that document) in the application to take approval actions. From the My Approvals page, you can selectively approve or reject assigned approval items.

The Consolidate Notifications check box when selected, enables the assignee to receive single consolidated assignment notification for all approval items. An approver then has the flexibility to approve or reject all or subset of the assigned requests. An assignee also receives consolidated e-mail notifications for cancellation and notify only requests. If an approver is defined for notify only steps, a consolidated notification email is sent after all the notify only steps are available. If an approval is cancelled, and the user is an assignee for multiple steps, the user receives a consolidated cancellation notification.

Email Approvals: In case of email approvals for consolidated notifications, when you approve or reject an approval using email, all the items that require approval are Approved or Rejected simultaneously. Email approval does not enable you to approve or reject individual approval items. You can then either respond to the email approval notification to approve or reject all the items assigned to the user or can navigate to the "My Approvals" page (provide the list of all the approval items for the user for that document) in the application to take approval actions. Within the application, from "My Approvals" page, user can selectively approve or reject assigned approval items. System will consolidate the approval requests as per the behavior specified above and send single notification for all the approval items that require approval from a given user when all the items become available, rather than sending separate notification for each approval item. The Consolidate Approvals check box when selected, enables the assignee to receive single consolidated assignment notification for all approval items. An approver can then either Approve All or Reject All the requests that require their approval.

1. To bundle multiple approvals into a single approval action, select Consolidate Approvals. Consolidated Approvals only works when Consolidated Notifications is selected.
2. To bundle multiple notifications into a single notification both via email and in Salesforce, select Consolidate Notifications. Consolidated Notifications can work independently.
3. To continue the approval process even when the approver rejects an approval request, select Continue Pending Approvals on a Reject. The Continue on Reject flag means “Continue to assign all approval requests in the chain as if all requests before it were approved regardless of whether they were or not." This flag at the approval process level does not have any effect on the flag at sub process (Process Rule) level. This flag at the approval process level and at sub process level do not necessarily have to be the same.
4. Click Next.

For more details and scenarios, see Consolidated Approvals, for more details.

Specifying the Custom Notification Email Templates

Specify the Custom Notification templates that are used when an approval request is sent to an approver or a reviewer via an email and click Next. You can specify the following email templates or leave the fields empty to use the default templates:

If you submit approvals with attachments, the email templates you use need to be custom templates.

Select Comment Settings

Submission comments are comments made by the person submitting the request at runtime and can be specified at the process or step level. When enabled at process level, the user can enter a comment that applies to the entire process when the request is submitted for approval. When enabled at step level, the user can enter from one to three comments for each step that step comments are enabled for when the request is submitted for approval. Submission comment labels specified below should be the actual name of the custom label and cannot contain spaces. At runtime the value in the custom labels is resolved as the label used for the comment. Submission comment labels are defined at the process header level but can be enabled for each step individually.

1. To customized comment that applies to the approval process or step when the request is submitted for approval, select Submission Comments Enabled.
2. To enable mandatory comments while approving an Approval process, select Approval Comments. This flag impacts an Approval on Run time, Approval Summary page as well as Approval dashboard. When the Approval comment flag at process level is enabled, an approver has to add comments while approving an approval request.
3. To enable rejection comments in an approval, select Rejection Comments. These comments can be entered by the submitter or an approver while approving or rejecting the request.
4. Click Save.

Selecting Entry Criteria

If your approval process is rule-based, you must specify entry criteria for the approval process. Meeting the entry criteria for an object record triggers the approval process. You must select an appropriate operator for the field value, as there is no validation of operator-value combinations. If no criteria are selected, all records require approval once the approval process has been activated.

1. Select the fields and operators to create your expression:

   Option	Description
   Field	The fields available are related to the business object, or a child filter if one is selected. If you have defined on your line item or child object's search filter approvals as entry criteria, all your child objects' corresponding fields are populated here.
   Operator	Select operators thoughtfully. For instance, an approval stage's field value cannot be greater than another field. If you select In or Not In, the value list becomes a multi-select list and you can choose multiple values. For example, if the field is Approval Status, you could select multiple values associated with it, such as Not Submitted and Pending Approval. Be sure to set a sequence number for the entry criteria to view their values. Note In approval rules or rule entry criteria with the criteria field blank at the record level, using the “does-not-contain” operator (!~) results in the approval request not being created. Use the not-equal-to operator (!=) instead of the does-not-contain operator.
   Value	The value that is compared against Field to determine if the expression is true or false.

   You can add more lines to the expression, joining them using logical AND and OR relationships.

2. Click Next.

Setting Up Display Fields for Preview and My Approvals Page

Select fields to display for preview and My Approvals pages. A maximum of six fields is allowed per step.

1. Header Display Field lists the fields that appear in the approval request header. Select a field from Header Display Field that appears on the record's My Approvals page.

2. Select display fields from the Unselected Items list and move them to the Selected Items list for display on the My Approvals page. To add more sections to the Approvals Summary page, click Add Section.
3. Click Next.

Setting Up Auto Re-Approval Settings

1. To set auto re-approval for the Approval process, select Enable auto re-approval.
2. To enable deletion of previously approved requests before the request is auto-approved., select Allow approved requests to be deleted.
3. Click Next.