Approval rules can automatically set the approval state to something other than Not yet requested. As a result, an approval rule can create a set of approvers. You can also start the approval process by setting the approval state to Requested.

Prerequisites

Role required: admin

Approval rules have two new fields:

  • Run rule before: If true, the approval rule runs before the record is inserted/updated.
  • Set State: If this rule applies, then the task record's approval state is automatically set to this value.
    Note: The Set State field only behaves as expected if the Run rule before check box is enabled.
  • In the example below, this rule automatically sets the state of the task to Approved thereby auto-approving the task.
Figure 1. Approval Rules fields