Force.com Platform Fundamentals

Preface
Introducing the Force.com Platform
About the Sample Recruiting App
Reviewing Database Concepts
Building a Simple App
Enhancing the Simple App with Advanced Fields, Data Validation, and Page Layouts
Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Securing and Sharing Data
Collaborating with Chatter
Using Custom Workflow and Approval Processes
Introducing Workflow
Workflow in Our Recruiting App
Creating Workflow Rules That Assign Tasks
Creating a Workflow Rule That Updates Fields
Creating a Workflow Rule That Sends Email Alerts
Introducing Approvals
Planning for Approval Processes
Try It Out: Create an Email Template for Approvals
Try It Out: Create an Approval Process
Try It Out: Create Approval Steps
Try It Out: Create Approval Actions
Try It Out: Activate Our Approval Process
Look At What We've Done
Summing Up
Analyzing Data with Reports and Dashboards
Moving Beyond Point-and-Click App Development
Learning More
Glossary
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Planning for Approval Processes

In most cases you'll find that you have to do a little advance planning before implementing an approval process on your own. The checklist available from “Getting Started with Approval Processes” in the Salesforce Help outlines the things that you should think about and the components you should build before diving in.

For this approval process, the only preliminary step we need to do is define an email template that can be used to notify the designated approver that he or she has a pending approval request.

Beyond the Basics

If Chatter is enabled for your organization, your users can receive approval requests as posts in their Chatter feed. You can also customize the way approval requests appear in the feed by creating post templates and associating them with your approval processes. For more information about how this works, see “About Approvals in Chatter” in the Salesforce Help.

Since we turned on notifications for Salesforce1, your users can receive in-app and push notifications when someone submits a record for approval. Individual users can opt in or out of approval request notifications in both email and Salesforce1 via the Receive Approval Request Emails user field. For more information, see “Changing Your Approval User Preferences” in the Salesforce Help.