To enable approval requests to be decided via email, an email service and Approval System Properties settings for emails must be configured.

Typically an approval request will be sent to the designated assignee, from where they can access Salesforce to see more details and approve the request; however, by ensuring these settings are configured correctly, an assignee can indicate their decision and progress the approval by simply replying to the request email.

To configure the email service

  1. Go to Build > Develop > Email Services and click New Email Service.
  2. For Email Service Name, enter ApprovalReplyService, and for Apex Class, select ApprovalEmailHandler.
  3. Select Active and enter an admin-level user's email address in Route Error Emails to This Email Address. The remaining settings are not required.
  4. Click Save and New Email Address and then enter ApprovalReplyService for the email address.
  5. Select Active, select a context user, and click Save. The email address is automatically generated for your Salesforce org, apart from the text that you entered in Step 4. For more details, see Salesforce Help.

This email service can now be used to ensure approval request emails are handled as expected.

To set the email system properties

  1. Go to Build > Develop > Custom Settings and click Manage for Approvals System Properties.
  2. Click Edit and ensure the email approval service address is the one the system automatically generated when you configured the email service above.
  3. Select the Enable Email Approval Response checkbox and click Save.

  4. To enable approval email response, follow the steps at Enable Email Approval Response.

    You cannot send template-based notifications to queue email addresses. If a queue's "Send Email to Members" box is unchecked, the current user's email (not the queue email address) is used for notifications. This is due to Salesforce limitations that we cannot bypass.

When someone replies to an approval request via email, their email address is set in the Email Approval Service Address field. Selecting Enable Email Approval Response means they can approve (by responding with Approve, Approved, or Yes) or reject (by responding with Reject, Rejected, or No) without logging into Salesforce. 

Bounce-Back Emails

If you make a spelling mistake when replying to an approval request email, the system can send you a "bounce-back" email to inform you of the error. As long as the previous tasks have been completed for the email service and email system properties, this occurs automatically.

Replying to an approval request email with one of the supported words (Approve, Approved, or Yes; or Reject, Rejected, or No) in the body updates the approval request status (approved or rejected) in the system. If you make a typo when you do this, no update is made. This feature informs you of the mistake so that you can make the necessary correction to ensure the approval process progresses as intended. The email is sent only to the approver who made the mistake. If you do not want to use the default text for the email, you can use Salesforce Translation Workbench to customize the text. A custom label provides the content for the body of the email, which you can override using translation text.

To customize the bounce-back email text

Prerequisite

You must have enabled the Translation Workbench for your org.

  1. Go to Build > Create > Custom Labels and select BounceBackEmailBody.
  2. Click New Local Translations / Overrides to display the New Translation page.
  3. Select the Language and enter the text you want included in the email and click Save.



The next time a bounce back email is sent, the body of the email will use the content in the Translation Text field for the corresponding language.

You can edit the text as required and also add different versions for multiple languages.