Manage Approvals like Never Before: More Control and Flexibility in your Approval Processes

Manage Approvals like Never Before: More Control and Flexibility in your Approval Processes

Hello Everyone,

We hope you are doing well!

We are here with exciting enhancements to the approval process of Zoho CRM. The updates provide greater flexibility, transparency, and control over record approvals, empowering you to ensure the right data enters your CRM system.

Here's what's new :
  • Editable Records in Approval : You can now edit records that are pending approval, ensuring their accuracy and up-to-date information before finalizing. Furthermore, you can choose Process Admins to approve records now, adding an extra layer of oversight.

  • Role or Group Approval Flexibility : Selecting roles or groups to approve records now provides the option to grant approval from any user in a group or from all users in the group. When set to Anyone, any user from the group can approve records, and when set to Everyone, approval will be required from every user in the group.

  • Hierarchical Approval Options : When the "Reporting To" hierarchy is selected for your organization, you can now specify whether Anyone or Everyone at higher levels can approve records if the user does not have a reporting manager in your approval processes. This flexible setting lets you align approval flows more precisely with your organization’s hierarchy.
Let's take a look at each of these enhancements in more detail.

Edit records waiting for approval and grant process admins privileges to approve records

Previously, you could not edit any records that's been submitted for approval in the approval process.

Now, you can edit the records that are waiting for approval. This ensures data accuracy can be maintained during the approval process. Updating key details, correcting errors, or adding new information – this enhancement enables you to keep records current before final approval, ensuring the final record reflects the most accurate and up-to-date data. This feature enables teams to work more smoothly, reducing issues caused by locked records. This helps ensure quality and completeness without restarting the approval process.

You can also assign process admins to oversee and approve records in your approval processes, providing a higher level of oversight and control. This capability is especially beneficial for larger teams or complex processes, reducing dependency on specific individuals and enhancing team flexibility, ensuring that approvals are not delayed due to limited access. These process admins can also edit records that are waiting for approval if needed.

If process admin settings are not configured, then any user with the Administrator profile will be able to take over records submitted for approval; however, if process admin settings are configured, only those users selected as process admins can take over a record submitted for approval.

Role or group approval flexibility

You can choose users of different roles or from groups from your organization to approve records in an approval process. Previously, if you select users from Roles or Groups to approve records, then ANYONE can approve the record and it is moved to the next stage.

Now, however, we have introduced an additional option where EVERYONE in the group or with the same role can approve records when the need arises.

For example, in the Zylker Tech organization, there is one CEO, five managers, and 10 executives. Additionally, there is a group of users from various roles. When selecting roles and groups to approve records, and you set the overall approval method as Everyone, you have two options:
  • Choose Anyone from your organization to approve records and move them to the next stage, such as adding new leads from a specific website would require any user's approval.
  • Choose Everyone from a group or with the same role in your organization to approve records, ensuring the entire team's approval is required for the record to move to the next stage, such as a quality check.

Configuring the approval process so that everyone in a group or role must approve a record before it progresses to the next stage helps ensure quality, compliance, and accountability.

Align your records approvals to your organization's hierarchy

You can choose to have either role hierarchy or reporting hierarchy for your organization from Company Settings in your Setup menu. This choice will also have an effect on your approval processes. This means, all existing and new approval processes will adhere to the selected organization's hierarchy.

When your organization follows the 'Reporting' hierarchy, the approval process will also follow the same hierarchy. This means, when you select levels to approve records, the system will choose users from the reporting hierarchy to approve the records.

For example, if your organization has two levels of reporting, and you choose 1st Level, then the user's immediate reporting manager or CEO and Administrators will have to approve the records. However, if you choose the 2nd Level, the user's immediate reporting manager's manager will have to approve the records.

In case you have two or more levels for approvals and you set the overall approval method as Everyone, then for users who do not have a reporting manager, you can choose to select Anyone or Everyone higher up in the hierarchy to approve records or select Anyone or Everyone from the CEO and Administrators to approve records.

Similarly, when your organization follows the 'Role' hierarchy, the approval process will also follow the same hierarchy. This means, when you select levels to approve records, the system will choose users from the role hierarchy to approve the records.

That's it for today, folks! We hope these enhancements provide you with greater control and transparency in managing approvals, simplifying the maintenance of accuracy and accountability across your CRM workflows.

Explore these new features today, and elevate your approval processes to new heights. Read more on how to add approval processes to your workflows from here.

Please feel free to comment below your queries, and we will get back to you at the earliest.

Info
Availability : This enhancement is available for all users in all DCs.



    • Recent Topics

    • inability to use different primary address on invoice per location

      my company operates in two different locations with different email address. The problems then is the inability to edit the primary to suite the invoice for the second location.

    • AI Search and Record Retrieval Inside Zoho Creator – Is This Possible?

      Is it possible to integrate an AI assistant into Zoho Creator that can intelligently search, retrieve, and analyze records within the application’s forms and reports? Can AI access and query existing Creator data securely using Deluge or APIs to provide

    • I have a requirement to integrate Zoho Books with Zoho Projects at both project and task levels.

      Currently, when i create transactions in Zoho Books (Expenses, Invoices, Bills), we can only map them at the project level. However, our requirement is to: Map records at both project and task levels Sync these transactions back to Zoho Projects under

    • Scheduled AU Data Center Database Version Upgrade for Zoho Forms

      Dear Zoho Forms' users, We would like to update you on a scheduled AU Data Center database version upgrade for Zoho Forms. Find the schedule below: Migration window: Sunday, 22nd February 2026 12.00 AM to 12.30 AM AEDT This migration is a part of our

    • Cannot get code to work with v2.mergeAndStore!

      Please can someone help me pass subform items into a repeating mail merge table row using v2.mergeAndStore? I have a mail merge template created in Writer and stored in Workdrive. This template is referenced by a custom CRM function which merges all of

    • Hotmail is blocking the zoho mail IP

      Greetings, Since last Tuesday (5 days ago today) I wrote to Zoho support and I still haven't received a single response (Ticket ID: 2056917). Is this how you treat people who pay for your email service? I am making this public so that those who want to

    • Zoho Bookings and Survey Integration through Flow

      I am trying to set up flows where once an appointment is marked as completed in Zoho Bookings, the applicable survey form would be sent to the customer. Problem is, I cannot customise flows wherein if Consultation A is completed, Survey Form A would be

    • Zoho CRM Community Digest - December 2025 | Part 2

      Hello Everyone! During the final weeks of December, Zoho CRM introduced updates that not only enhanced product capabilities but also offered deeper guidance through Kaizen posts. This section highlights what was released and shared in the last two weeks

    • CRUD actions for Resources via API

      Hello, is it possible to perform CRUD actions through the API for Resources? We want to create a sync from Zoho CRM Car record to Bookings resources to create availabilities for Car bookings. For Test drives, not only the sales person needs to be available,

    • Kaizen #186 : Client Script Support for Subforms

      Hello everyone! Welcome back to another exciting Kaizen post on Client Script! In this edition, we’re taking a closer look at Client Script Support for Subforms with the help of the following scenario. " Zylker, a manufacturing company, uses the "Orders"

    • Unable to Assign Multiple Categories to a Single Product in Zoho Commerce

      Hello Zoho Commerce Support Team, I am facing an issue while assigning categories to products in Zoho Commerce. I want to assign multiple categories to a single product, but in the Item edit page, the Category field allows selecting only one category

    • オンライン勉強会のお知らせ Zoho ワークアウト （2/19 参加無料）

      ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの中野です。 2月開催のZoho ワークアウトについてお知らせします。 今回はZoomにて、オンライン開催します。 ▶︎参加登録はこちら（無料） https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/6AyVUxp6QDmMQiDGXGkxPA ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Zoho ワークアウトとは？ Zoho ユーザー同士で交流しながら、サービスに関する疑問や不明点の解消を目指すイベント「Zoho

    • doubts about customer happiness in zoho desk

      Good afternoon, Desk community. The reason for my message is that I have a question regarding the customer satisfaction surveys we can ask our clients to rate our service. I know that in Desk, you can activate Customer Happiness to send a survey to the

    • COQL API in JS Widget only pulling 200 records

      Hello! We've been building a custom homepage widget using the Zoho JS SDK, and it seems that this https://help.zwidgets.com/help/latest/ZOHO.CRM.API.html#.coql only allows 200 records. I thought the limit was 2000 for COQL queries, but am I mistaken?

    • Standard Description Field - Can I change label or add dd tooltip

      Is there a way fo you guys to allow the customer to change the label name for the description field in the customer portal when submitting tickets. Or at least allow us to add a tooltip to clarify what description we need from them. I know I can create my own separate multi line description field but if I do that, it doesn't have the nice toolbar with Bold, Italic, Underline, color, font, indent, etc. Can you please allow us to add a tooltip to the zoho standard description field?

    • Introducing parent-child ticketing in Zoho Desk [Early access]

      Hello Zoho Desk users! We have introduced the parent-child ticketing system to help customer service teams ensure efficient resolution of issues involving multiple, related tickets. You can now combine repetitive and interconnected tickets into parent-child

    • Compensation | Salary Packages - Hourly Wage Needed

      The US Bureau of Labor Statistics says 55.7% of all workers in the US are paid by the hour. I don't know how that compares to the rest of the world, but I would think that this alone would justify the need for having an hourly-based salary package option.

    • Customizing Helpcenter texts

      I’m customizing the Zoho Desk Help Center and I’d like to change the wording of the standard widgets – for example, the text in the “Submit Ticket” banner that appears in the footer, or other built-in widget labels and messages. So far, I haven’t found

    • Ability to Edit Ticket Subject when Splitting a Ticket

      Often someone will make an additional or new request within an existing ticket that requires we split the ticket. The annoying part is that the new ticket maintains the subject of the original ticket after the split so when the new ticket email notification

    • Automatically Update Form Attachment Service with Newly added Fields

      Hi, When I have a Form Setup and connected to a 3rd Party Service such as OneDrive for Form Attachments, when I later add a new Upload Field I have to remove and redo the entire 3rd Party Setup from scratch. This needs to be improved, such as when new

    • Unable to produce monthly P&L reports for previous years

      My company just migrated to Books this year. We have 5+ years financial data and need to generate a monthly P&L for 2019 and a monthly P&L YTD for 2020. The latter is easy, but I'm VERY surprised to learn that default reports in Zoho Books cannot create

    • Reopen ticket on specific date/time

      Is there a way that we can close a ticket and setup a reopen of that ticket on a specific date and time? (without using the "on hold" ticket option)

    • API credit COQL COUNT

      The docs describe API credits in COQL from the LIMIT perspective: https://www.zoho.com/crm/developer/docs/api/v8/COQL-Overview.html When using aggregate functions such as `COUNT` or `SUM`, is that billed as 1 API credit?

    • Weekly Tips : Save Time with Saved Search

      Let's assume your work requires you to regularly check emails from important clients that have attachments and were sent within a specific time period. Instead of entering the same conditions every time—like sender, date range, and attachments included—you

    • Remove 'This is an automated mail from Zoho Sign' in footer

      Hi there, Is it possible to remove or change the text under the e-mail templates? I can't figure out how to do that: Would love to hear from you. Kind regards, Tristan

    • Organize and manage PDFs with Zoho PDF Editor's dashboard

      Hello users, Zoho PDF Editor's dashboard is a one-stop place to upload, sort, share PDF files, and more. This article will explore the various capabilities that Zoho PDF Editor's dashboard offers. A few highlights of Zoho PDF Editor's dashboard: Upload

    • Custom function return type

      Hi, How do I create a custom deluge function in Zoho CRM that returns a string? e.g. Setup->Workflow->Custom Functions->Configure->Write own During create or edit of the function I don't see a way to change the default 'void' to anything else. Adding

    • Passing Info from Function to Client Script

      Hello, I have recently started making use of client script for buttons, allowing me to give the user information or warnings before they proceed. This is great. However, I have never quite managed to pass back any extra information from the function to

    • Drag 'n' Drop Fields to a Sub-Form and "Move Field To" Option

      Hi, I would like to be able to move fields from the Main Page to a Sub-Form or from a Sub-Form to either the Main Page or another Sub-Form. Today if you change the design you have to delete and recreate every field, not just move them. Would be nice to

    • Zoho Payroll for Canada

      Is anyone else having problems getting setup for Canada?

    • Passing the CRM

      Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when

    • One Contact with Multiple Accounts with Portal enabled

      I have a contact that manages different accounts, so he needs to see the invoices of all the companies he manage in Portal but I found it not possible.. any idea? I tried to set different customers with the same email contact with the portal enabled and

    • User Automation: User based workflow rules & webhooks

      User management is an undeniable part of project management and requires adequate monitoring. As teams grow and projects multiply, manual coordination for updating users & permissions becomes difficult and can give way to errors. User automation in Zoho

    • Disable Zoho Contacts

      We don't want to use this app... How can we disable it?

    • Default Ticket View - Table?

      Guys, We mostly use the table view to queue tickets. Maybe I am missing it - but how can I set that view as 'default" for all our agents? Thanks JV

    • Zoho One IS BUGGY

      Here are some things that just don't work: - Disabling applications from certain Spaces - Adding users (probably only for me) - Renaming applications in Zoho One Portal (fixed by now) - Reordering applications in Spaces When I try to reorder: It feels

    • Merge Fields that previously worked are now giving an Error!

      Saving a URL Link button on the Deal module. The below fields used to save without issue at all, but now produce an error of "URL contains unsupported merge field!" ${Contacts.Mailing Street} ${Contacts.Mailing City} ${Contacts.Mailing State} ${Contacts.Mailing

    • Clarification on Zoho Forms 1-User Plan: Multiple Submitters and Approvers

      Question Content (Copy–Paste Ready) Hello Zoho Team, I would like clarification regarding Zoho Forms pricing and user limits. I am planning to subscribe to the ₹700/month (1 user) plan. My use case is as follows: Only 1 person (myself) will create and

    • CRM Cadences recognise auto-responses

      I have leads in a Cadence. I get an auto-responder reply "I'm out of the office..." Normally Cadences seems to know that isn't a real reply and keeps the lead enrolled in the cadence. However, today, Cadences has UNENROLLED a Lead who sent an auto-reponse

    • App for Mac OS X please!

      It would be awesome to have a mail app for Mac OS X that included all the cool features such as steams, calendar, tasks, contacts, etc. Most people prefer native apps, rather than running it through a web browser. I know that we can use the IMAP, CalDAV,

    • Next Page