Let’s cover out-of-the-box, approval process feature, from which you can then decide if it works for you and your team. We’ll use the below Edge installation opportunity as our example for our approval process. The business rule is when the sales stage is at Negotiation/Review, enable the user to submit the opportunity for approval.
The first step is deciding who needs to approve the deal. Is it a user or a team of people? If it is a team, you have to set up a queue.
Please note email link approval won’t work if approvers are set up in a Queue. See the link below.
https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.approvals_considerations_approver.htm&type=5
Step two is setting up an email notification to notify the approver that an Opportunity requires their review. Ensure email deliverability is not set to ‘No Access’ for emails to go out of your org. Create an email template.
Now, let’s set up an approval process.
Once you’re done setting up the approval, navigate to the opportunity. Anytime it’s edited to meet the approval criteria, the ‘submit for approval’ button will be visible which you can click to put in your comments and submit the Opportunity for approval.
The approver will receive an email which looks like the one below. Note the approver can reply with ‘reject’ or ‘approve’ on the first line and on the next line, write their comments. Note that this has to be done in this exact way. If there are spelling errors on the words reject or approve or the comments are on the same line as rection/ approve, it will not work. Below are the words that can be used to approve or reject a request.
Approve
Approved
Yes
Reject
Rejected
No
Alternatively, the approver can simply click one of the approval links.
Once the approver has replied, action details are saved under Approval history-related list.
The approval history stores details about where the Opportunity is in the process of approval, who the submitter is, and the approver, their notes etc. Note, If the deal has attachments, the approver will have to login to Salesforce to check those attachments out.