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Submit For Approval Through Workflow Rules

I think it would be useful to be able to automatically submit records for approval using Workflow Rules. Some users may forget to click the 'Submit Approval' button, and lose precious time in a short sales cycle. Also, they may not realize that they need to submit a record for approval in certain circumstances. If you could Submit for Approval through Workflow Rules, certain conditions could trigger an automatic Approval submission.

Does anyone else think this might be useful?

LucBaart 03/25/07	not just useful, necessary even. You can not count on users to do the extra click. It's good I did a search because I was about to submit the same thing
Train 10/03/07	Merged Idea originally posted 05/15/07 Approval Process Need a way to enforce the approval process. i.e through a workflow - for example when discount is set to above a threshold, automatically send the opportunity for approval and not be able to edit it until it is approved. Also when approving, record the field values at the time of approval for auditing pruposes- otherwise user can just change the discount once the opportunity has been approved!
Scott_Jorgensen 10/03/07	Merged Comment originally posted 05/16/07 Did you look at the Approval Automation that was released in Spring '07? I think it addresses what you're looking for. If not please post back here what is missing.
sfdcbg 10/03/07	Merged Idea originally posted 04/24/07 Allow Automated Workflow Approval Currently, there isn't a way to automatically start the Approval Process. It would be helpful if an Approval Process could be started by triggering certain criteria. Keep the "Submit for Approval" button, but allow the app to start approval process automatically OR manually.
Rajaram 10/04/07	I would like to get some feedback on this feature request. As soon as a record is submitted for approval, the record is locked and the person submitting it may not be able to change it- though he may be able to recall it. Given this behavior, how do you think the users feel if the record is locked as soon as it is saved? The user operating on the record may not be aware of the record being submitted for approval. To reduce the number of clicks the user need to do, one of the ideas which some customers suggested was to have a "Save and Submit" button on the edit page. What do you think about this? Please provide any feedback so that we can work towards a good usable solution! Cheers, Raja
Scott_Jorgensen 10/08/07	"Save and Submit" sounds like an excellent idea. In fact, it's probably much better than having the record get submitted by workflow when a user didn't intend to.
AlexCRMmanager 11/22/07	Raja, why not just prompt the user with a warning, "If you confirm the changes made to this record, it will be locked and submitted for approval." Companies may not care about whether the user likes the fact that their record was locked. If they can set up the criteria whereby the approval process MUST begin, and just warn the user when they are about to cross that threshold, I think would be far more desirable. A user isn't going to understand a "Save and Submit" button any better than they'll remember to use the current manual approval process. After it gets automatically submitted once or twice, the user will understand what is happening. It also saves them making an extra click or two to start the approval process. The point is that people often forget about or ignore the approval process. We need a way to automate it so that it doesn't matter if they forget it or not. Isn't that a big part of what Salesforce.com is - "Sales Force Automation"?
Chrisr Jan 24	Merged Idea originally posted 06/01/07 Approval Processes Triggered Automatically It would be great to have approval processes that are triggered automatically. This could either be done at the approval process level, or allow a workflow rule to trigger an approval process. The reason for this is that we would like to track opportunities and when certain criteria are met, automatically trigger the approval process. I don't want to rely on the salesperson submitting something for approval. It just adds an unnecessary step. The other problem is, is that workflow rules don't have the same functionality as an approval process.
JohnC5674 Mar 25	After you submit for approval and its approved. Is there a way to keep a rep from going and changing the discount or is there something that will remove approvals and require a new set of approvals?
mark_silber Mar 26	One way would be to flip the Record Type when the object is approved and present a read only page layout that doesn't have any of the buttons on it. The 2nd way would be to create a validation rule that doesn't allow a user to save the record (or change the discount) after it's been approved (based on a field that's updated when the record has finished the approval process).
mdgonz Jun 19	Excellent Idea
jcoppedge Jun 25	Sigh... another one of those "why doesn't this already exist?" ideas for me! This can be done with code, example: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/apex_process_exa... However, it can't through workflow. That at least should be an option.
jdb Aug 28	Agree. This feature is not merely useful but vital. From my perspective (CFO) it is an internal control risk that a quote outside of standard policy requiring approval must be manually routed by the individual creating the quote to be approved.

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