--- schema_version: "1" id: f6b6716ad4df683adadc63423e287bfe5e80d8741be656c4f88da59f7889a4d3 title: Considerations for Classic Approval Process History Reports collection: admin version: current locale: en-us portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/admin/current/en-us/platform/264-0-0/approval_history_reports_limitations.md canonical_url: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.approval_history_reports_limitations.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 source_site: help.salesforce.com content_type: documentation content_hash: 5fa93d0ac3aa30cb3c03f57becc9df9364bc6820eb883c6a07e1fb4bac946079 description: Understand the limitations and special behaviors when you create or view approval history reports, which provide a detailed history of classic approval processes and steps. products: - Flow Builder - Salesforce Platform release: "264" --- # Considerations for Classic Approval Process History Reports Understand the limitations and special behaviors when you create or view approval history reports, which provide a detailed history of classic approval processes and steps. ### Required Editions

Available in: both Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience

Available in: Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

![Important](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-platform-platform_automation-264-0-0-production-enus/60568438-ec7e-4665-acd1-7c80dcbe60d5/images/icon_important.png) Important Try [Flow Approval Processes](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.automate_automated_approvals.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "As your company grows, so does the complexity of your approvals, often requiring input from multiple people in different departments across different time zones. This complexity can mean that you spend more time waiting for each person to complete their review in the right order. Flow Approval Processes helps you coordinate multistep reviews that involve users, systems, and conditional paths."), a modern alternative to Classic Approval Processes. This new feature provides a more flexible, user-friendly flow-based interface, and it can trigger on record changes, supporting Apex extensibility and detailed logging for compliance and audit trails. It supports dynamic routing based on data and business rules, unlike Classic Approval Processes, which are tied to specific objects and offer limited support for processes by using conditions. With Flow Approval Processes, you can monitor submitted records and quickly identify bottlenecks, giving you unprecedented visibility into approval workflows. And, like Classic Approval Processes, Flow Approval Processes don’t consume automation credits or orchestration runs. ## Considerations for Approval Processes That Were Completed Before or Pending during the Summer '14 Rollout When Summer ’14 became available for your organization, the approval history data was automatically populated for completed and pending classic approval processes. However, some approval history field values are never populated or are populated only after the classic approval process instance is next acted upon—such as when a user approves, rejects, or reassigns an approval request—after the Summer ’14 rollout. Additional exceptions apply to approval history data that is available only via SOQL queries of certain objects. See ProcessInstance, ProcessInstanceNode, ProcessInstanceStep, and ProcessInstanceWorkitem in the Object Reference for Salesforce.

Object	When Fields are Populated
Process Instance	For classic approval process instances that were completed before the Summer ’14 rollout, all Process Instance fields are automatically populated, with one exception: `Completed Date` is never populated for classic approval process instances that were completed before January 1, 2013. For classic approval process instances that were pending during the Summer ’14 rollout, all Process Instance fields are automatically populated, with two exceptions: `Completed Date` and `Last Actor: Full Name` are populated only after the classic approval process instance is complete.
Process Instance Node	Never populated for classic approval process instances that were completed before the Summer ’14 rollout. For classic approval process instances that were pending during the Summer ’14 rollout, all Process Instance Node fields are populated only after the classic approval process instance is next acted upon after the Summer ’14 rollout.

Object

When Fields are Populated

Process Instance

For classic approval process instances that were completed before the Summer ’14 rollout, all Process Instance fields are automatically populated, with one exception: Completed Date is never populated for classic approval process instances that were completed before January 1, 2013.

For classic approval process instances that were pending during the Summer ’14 rollout, all Process Instance fields are automatically populated, with two exceptions: Completed Date and Last Actor: Full Name are populated only after the classic approval process instance is complete.

Process Instance Node

Never populated for classic approval process instances that were completed before the Summer ’14 rollout.

For classic approval process instances that were pending during the Summer ’14 rollout, all Process Instance Node fields are populated only after the classic approval process instance is next acted upon after the Summer ’14 rollout.

## Considerations for the Sandbox Environment If you copy approval history data to a sandbox, some field values are overwritten and don't reflect the actual approval history.

Object	Field	When an existing process instance or process instance node record is copied to a sandbox...
Process Instance	`Submitted Date`	This value is overwritten by the date and time when the process instance record is copied to the sandbox.
Process Instance	`Submitter: Full Name`	This value is overwritten by the name of the user who copied the process instance record to the sandbox.
Process Instance Node	`Step Start Date`	This value is overwritten by the date and time when the process instance node record is copied to the sandbox.

#### See Also - [Fields Available for Classic Approval Process History Reports](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.approval_history_reports_fields.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "If you create a custom report type with Process Instance as the primary object and Process Instance Node as the related object, you can create approval history reports with various combinations of fields that enable you to view a detailed history of executed and in-progress classic approval processes and their individual steps.") - [Classic Approval Process History Reports](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.approval_history_reports.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "If you create a custom report type for classic approval process instances, users can view the historical details of completed and in-progress classic approval processes and their individual steps.")