When an approval step is used, the completion status of that step is controlled by the approval, rejection, or recall action by an assigned user. If a user approves the step, the step status is set to the status selected in the Approval Status field. If a user rejects the step, the step status is set to the status selected in the Rejection Status field.

If a user recalls the step, the step status is set to the status selected in the Recalled Status field. You make additional changes and submit again. A new task is created for the newly submitted approval. 

Approvals are only available for the Create Record step type. During process execution, the approval appears on the generated step’s (i.e. Task) view screen. You do not edit the record to access the approval item. The record’s Status will automatically change to the appropriate value when the approval item is completed.

The record locking behavior described below is present when managing the status of a step with approval.

  • Process objects: editing of the record is limited to approvers and administrators. If there are multiple approval steps outstanding, any of the approvers will be able to edit.
  • Steps: Editing the status field is blocked since it is managed by the Orchestrate approval.

To create Approval

  1. Create or edit a step with a step type of Create Record.
  2. Select Approval in the Status Managed By field.
  3. In the Step Approval Items section, set the Approval Status field to the status you wish the step to be set to upon step approval. This list is populated with Closed Status Values.
  4. Set the Rejection Status to the status you wish the step to be set to upon step approval. This list is populated with Closed Status Values.

  5. Set the Rejection Action to Continue if you wish for the step to follow a different path in the event of a rejection; set it to Stop Process if you wish for the process to stop upon rejection of the step. Choose Go Back to loop the process back to a prior Step or Stage; the lookups (Step and Stage) will appear when this option is selected and one or the other is required to be populated when choosing this option.

    You may wish to reassign the generated step to another approver. The current (assigned) approver, their manager, or a system administrator can reassign the step.

  6. If the approval request is recalled, the step status is set to the status selected in the Recalled Status field set at the time of step creation. In the example below, it is set to Canceled.
  7. Click Save.

If you have configured a custom object as a step, a new custom lookup relationship field must be added to your custom object that looks up to the Approval object. The API name of the field needs to be approval__c. Also, in order to view the approval items on a custom object's page layout in Classic, a Visualforce page will need to be created and added to the page layout.

Add Approvals Lightning Component

If you customized your Task page layouts or Process Task page layouts in the Lightning App Builder, you will need to manually add the Approval Item Lightning component to your Lightning Pages.

You can also add a Lightning Component to your Process Object to manage all related Approvals. For more information, see Use a Lightning Component to Manage Approvals for a Process Object.