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Choose an Automated Approver Throughout a Classic Approval Process

Associate a hierarchy field—such as the user’s manager—with a classic approval process. When selected, the field is available as an assigned approver option for approval steps. You can always select a hierarchy field here but not use it for any approval steps.

Required Editions

Available in: both Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience
Available in: Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions
Important
Important Try Flow Approval Processes, 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.

Set Next Automated Approver Determined By with one of the following options.

Option Description
--None-- Approval requests aren’t automatically assigned based on a field. Instead, you manually specify a user to approve all approval requests.
Field Approval requests are assigned to an approver from the specified field. You can select only a hierarchical relationship field, such as Manager.
Use Approver Field of Object Owner

Available only when Field is selected.

If selected, the first executed approval step sets the approver to the value of Field on the record owner’s user record—instead of the submitter’s user record.

All remaining steps use Field in the user record of the preceding step’s approver.

Example
Example

If you select the Manager field, you can configure any step in this classic approval process to route approval requests to the submitting user’s manager.

If you select Use Approver Field of Object Owner, the first step that isn’t skipped is routed to the owner’s manager. All other steps are routed to the previous approver’s manager.

See Also