Salesforces Spring 25 Release brings exciting improvements to Approvals with salesforce flow, making the approval process more efficient and adaptable. These new capabilities enhance automation, user experience, and flexibility, reducing reliance on traditional Approval Processes while leveraging the power of Flow.

With Salesforce Flow emerging as the primary declarative automation tool, it’s no surprise that it now includes dedicated approval-process functionality, rather than simply triggering an existing Approval Process through an action. In this post, we’ll dive into the new Flow Approval Orchestration and explore how you can build a complete Approval Process using only Salesforce Flow—without any additional cost.

What Are Flow Approval Processes?

Flow Approval Processes are a feature of Salesforce’s Flow Orchestrator, a powerful tool for automating complex workflows. An approval orchestration consists of multiple stages, each containing specific steps to facilitate the review and approval of records. These stages can include:

  • Approval Steps– Assign approval requests to designated users, groups, or queues for review.
  • Background Steps– Automate actions related to the approval process without requiring user interaction.

When to Use Flow Approval Processes

Flow Approval Processes are especially beneficial in situations such as:

  • Multi-Level Approvals – When approvals must be reviewed by multiple stakeholders in a defined sequence.
  • Involvement of External Parties – When partners, vendors, or customers outside your organization need to participate in the approval process.
  • Conditional Approval Paths – When approvals follow different routes based on specific criteria or business rules.
  • Global Teams & Scheduling Challenges – When approvers operate across different time zones or have varying availability.

Creating a Simple Flow Approval Process:

Use Case:

A global company implements Flow Approval Processes to regulate high-value opportunities exceeding $20 million. This ensures that large deals undergo managerial review before being added to sales forecasts, preventing inaccurate pipeline projections. Once approved, a task is automatically created and linked to the opportunity, indicating its approval status.

Orchestrations are automations that stitch together flows. Therefore you need to prepare your flows first.

Step 1: Create the approval screen flow that will be displayed on the lightning record page work item component. Use the “Approvals Workflow: Evaluate Approval Requests flow template” in your Org to create your flow.

  1. Go to Setup → Quick Find Box → Flows → New Flow
  2. Select → Use a Template

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Select Screen Flow → Approval Workflow: Evaluate Approval Requests → Click on Create

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It will create a built in Screen flow like below in the picture

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After creating the flow Save & Activate it.

Step 2: Create an autolaunched flow that will create the task.

  1. Go to Setup → Flows → New Flow → Start From Scratch
  2. Click on Autolaunched Flow (No Trigger) → Click on Create

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Add an element create records and fill all the required details to create task

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Now Save and Activate this flow

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Step 3: Build a Record-Triggered Approval Orchestration from scratch.

  1. Go to Setup → Flows → New Flow → Start From Scratch
  2. Select Record-Triggered Approval Orchestration → Click on Create
  3. Fill all the required detail in start element which runs when it will trigger

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Now add an element and select Stage

Fill all the details as per below picture

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Now click on Add Step → Approval step

and fill the details:

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Now we will add a decision element to approve or reject the work item

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Now add another stage on Approved condition:

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Now click on add step and select Background step and fill all the required details:

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Now click on Save and Activate the flow.image 14

Now we will set this screen flow in our opportunity record page by following the below steps:

Go to Opportunity → Open a record → select gear icon → Click on Edit page

On the left side search bar select flow and drag and drop Flow Orchestration Work Guide and click on save and activate it.

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Congratulations you have setup your flow.

Now when you click on clone the opportunity and in the Amount field you have entered greater than $20 million. then you will see a new window on the right side as Work Guide check the checkbox based on approve or reject and pass the comments and click on Finish button. Now if approved it will create a task on the opportunity with all the details we have filed during creating flow in the above steps.

Click here for the demo video to show it will work.

Enhanced Approval Management with Flow Approval Orchestration

Along with the powerful Flow Approval Orchestration features, Salesforce introduces a centralized hub where both admins and users can easily manage approvals. The new Lightning App provides intuitive list views, allowing seamless navigation through Approval Submissions, Submission Details, and Work Items.

These list views are fully customizable—users can reorder fields or adjust layouts as needed.

Each Approval Submission record includes valuable insights for analytics and troubleshooting, displaying real-time status updates, including error notifications. Additionally, users can quickly access key details such as the related object, associated record, and approval work items. The Related section further breaks down submission details, including specifics like the action channel name.

Click here to watch video.

Flow Approval Processes: Limits and Key Considerations:

  • No Automation Credit Usage – Flow Approval Processes do not consume automation credits or orchestration runs.
  • Lightning-Only Availability – This feature is exclusive to Lightning Experience.
  • Supported Editions – Available in:
  1. Enterprise Edition
  2. Performance Edition
  3. Unlimited Edition
  4. All Einstein 1 Editions
  5. Developer Edition
  • Government Cloud Support – Compatible with Government Cloud and Government Cloud Plus.
  • Limits:
  1. 50 versions per approval orchestration.
  2. 2,000 active flows, including orchestrations and approval orchestrations.
  3. 4,000 total flows, including orchestrations and approval orchestrations.

When designing Approval Orchestrations, always consider security best practices. For a full list of limitations and considerations, review the [official documentation] before implementation.

Conclusion for Approvals with Salesforce Flow

Salesforce Flow Approval Processes revolutionize approval workflows by automating complex, multi-step processes across multiple users. This not only streamlines approvals but also enhances efficiency, minimizes errors, and ensures consistency.

Whether you’re overseeing vendor contracts, employee reimbursements, or marketing approvals, Flow Approval Processes offer the scalability and flexibility needed to adapt to your business’s evolving needs. Stay curious, keep experimenting, and we’ll see you in the next release update. Also, stay tuned with The Pinq Clouds available on AppExchange for insightful blogs and updates. Happy coding!