Approval Processing

An approval process is an automated process your organization can use to approve records in Salesforce. An approval process specifies the steps necessary for a record to be approved and who must approve it at each step. A step can apply to all records included in the process, or just records that meet certain administrator-defined criteria. An approval process also specifies the actions to take when a record is approved, rejected, recalled, or first submitted for approval.

Use the Apex process classes to create approval requests and process the results of those requests:
Use the Approval.process method to submit an approval request and approve or reject existing approval requests. For more information, see Approval Class.

The process method counts against the DML limits for your organization. See Execution Governors and Limits.

Note

For more information about approval processes, see “Getting Started with Approval Processes” in the Salesforce online help.

Force.com Apex Code Developer's Guide

Approval Processing