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

        • Bank charges are applied. Please select a bank account.

          Hello, I'm trying to add bank charges to a customer payment, but I get the error message "Bank charges are applied. Please select a bank account." I found this old thread, where it says that I need to "select a Bank account for the 'Deposit To' dropdown

        • Kaizen #207 - Answering your Questions | Advanced Queries using COQL API

          Hi everyone, and welcome to another Kaizen week! As part of Kaizen #200 milestone, many of you shared topics you would like us to cover, and we have been addressing them one by one over the past few weeks. Today, we are picking up one of those requests

        • Présentation de SecureForms dans Zoho Vault

          Soyons francs : demander à quelqu’un de transmettre un mot de passe ou des informations sensibles n’est jamais une tâche facile. On attend, on relance, parfois de nombreuses fois. Et quand l’information arrive, elle se retrouve souvent dispersée dans

        • Introducing Connected Records to bring business context to every aspect of your work in Zoho CRM for Everyone

          Hello Everyone, We are excited to unveil phase one of a powerful enhancement to CRM for Everyone - Connected Records, available only in CRM's Nextgen UI. With CRM for Everyone, businesses can onboard all customer-facing teams onto the CRM platform to

        • Granular Email Forwarding Controls in Zoho Mail (Admin Console and Zoho One)

          Hello Zoho Mail Team, How are you? At present, the Zoho Mail Admin Console allows administrators to configure email forwarding for an entire mailbox, forwarding all incoming emails to another address. This is helpful for delegation or backup purposes,

        • Sales order & purchase order item links for item details

          This is fantastic for checking lots of things, I use it a lot. It would be great to see it extended to invoices & bills On another note, may as well throw in my favourite whinge ..... Wish you guys would get the PO receive differences sorted urgently,

        • Zoho Workdrive - Communication / Chat Bar

          Hi Team, Please consider adding an option to allow admins to turn on or off the Zoho Communication Bar. Example of what I mean by Communication Bar: It's such a pain sometimes when I'm in WorkDrive and I want to share a link to a file with a colleague

        • Kaizen #190 - Queries in Custom Related Lists

          Hello everyone! Welcome back to another week of Kaizen! This week, we will discuss yet another interesting enhancement to Queries. As you all know, Queries allow you to dynamically retrieve data from CRM as well as third-party services directly within

        • Need the ability to have read only fields on a form.

          There needs to be functionality in Creator that allows a field on a form to be read only. Most screen building software applications have this capability. I know you can hide certain fields from specific users and that you can also make the whole form read only but that's not the functionality I need. I want to be able to create a form where certain fields are editable and other are for display purposes only (read only). For example if the form was displaying information on an item that the user

        • Reverse payment on accidentally closed invoice.

          An invoice was closed accidentally with the full payment added. However, only partial payment was paid. How can I reopen the invoice and reverse this to update it to show partial payment?

        • New integration: Track booking page appointments in Google Analytics 4

          Hello all, Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We’re excited to introduce our new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) integration designed to help you track booking activity, understand customer behavior, and measure marketing performance, all in one place. What

        • How to list emails in a folder, e.g. Inbox, on multiple pages when using Zoho mail webpage?

          Something as shown in the figure. There are totally 50 emails in Sent folder. If "Mail per page" equals 20, then the Sent folder is split into 3 pages. When I wander through Sent folder, I can just select a specific page to jump to. BTW, it seems that

        • Zoho Calendar soft bounce on @hotmail.com and @yahoo.com email addresses

          Hello, our Zoho calendar recently does not send the calendar invites to emails with hotmail and yahoo domains and comes back with a "soft bounce". other domains like Gmail works fine. Also sending "email" to the same emails to the above domains work well

        • ERROR CODE :512 - 5.4.4 DNS error:NXDOMAIN.

          Suddenly we cant send mail, we are getting this error for all outbound mail to multiple domains.

        • Can Zoho Flows repeat Actions more than once?

          I'm attempting to make an intentional Zoho Flow loop using the below layout. However, when "WithinLimit" condition is met, the program fails to execute the action "Get & Add Request Co..." again. Is this by design? Is Zoho Flows unable to repeat actions

        • Unveiling Cadences: Redefining CRM interactions with automated sequential follow-ups

          Last modified on 01/04/2024: Cadences is now available for all Zoho CRM users in all data centres (DCs). Note that it was previously an early access feature, available only upon request, and was also known as Cadences Studio. As of April 1, 2024, it's

        • customer data security

          We are exploring ways to enhance our within Zoho CRM. Our Goal: We want to fully integrate RingCentral with Zoho CRM to enable click-to-call functionality for our sales team. However, to comply with data privacy regulations and protect customer contact

        • Zoho Cliq not working on airplanes

          Hi, My team and I have been having this constant issue of cliq not working when connected to an airplane's wifi. Is there a reason for this? We have tried on different Airlines and it doesn't work on any of them. We need assistance here since we are constantly

        • Sync CRM inventory data with Zoho Books

          I just switched everything over to ZoHo books, but I am trying to find out why the CRM Estimates, Invoices, and Sales Orders created in ZoHo CRM are not then duplicated in ZoHo Books? I had Quickbooks before, and had to do everything twice, I thought

        • mask Customer phone number and agents cant see customer phone number

          Is there any way we can integrate Zoom Phone with Zoho CRM while ensuring that customer phone numbers remain masked? We need a solution where agents can make outbound calls but cannot see customer phone numbers. Please let us know if there is any solution

        • Email Reminders on Shared Calendars

          How do we turn off the setting that emails reminders to everyone who has accepted or declined a calendar invite? If 8 of us have been invited to the same meeting, we receive 8 notifications for every step of the process, from invitation to decision.

        • WebDAV / FTP / SFTP protocols for syncing

          I believe the Zoho for Desktop app is built using a proprietary protocol. For the growing number of people using services such as odrive to sync multiple accounts from various providers (Google, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, etc.) it would be really helpful if you implemented standard protocols such as WebDAV / FTP / SFTP so that alternative inc clients can be used.

        • What's New in Zoho Inventory | Q2 2025

          Hello Customers, The second quarter have been exciting months for Zoho Inventory! We’ve introduced impactful new features and enhancements to help you manage inventory operations with even greater precision and control. While we have many more exciting

        • How to refresh a ticket view ?

          I am doing a widget where I send a rest api call to make a new draft to the ticket I am viewing. The issue is sometimes it refresh a ticket view and I can see inserted draft right away, but sometimes I do not see it even if it is inserted correctly and

        • Ugh! - Text Box (Single Line) Not Enough - Text Box (Multi-line) Unavailable in PDF!

          I provide services, I do not sell items. In each estimate I send I provide a customized job description. A two or three sentence summary of the job to be performed. I need to be able to include this job description on each estimate I send as it's a critical

        • Merge Items

          Is there a work around for merging items? We currently have three names for one item, all have had a transaction associated so there is no deleting (just deactivating, which doesn't really help. It still appears so people are continuing to use it). I also can't assign inventory tracking to items used in past transactions, which I don't understand, this is an important feature moving forward.. It would be nice to merge into one item and be able to track inventory. Let me know if this is possible.

        • Supervisor Rules - Zoho Desk

          Hi, I have set up a Supervisor Rule in Zoho Desk to send an email alert when a ticket has been on hold for 48 hours. Is there a way to change it so that the alert only sends once and not on an hourly basis? Thank you Laura

        • ResponseCode 421, 4.7.0 [TSS04] Messages from 136.143.188.51 temporarily deferred due to user complaints

          Had email bounce. Let me know if you can fix this. Thanks. Michael

        • Automation #15: Automatically Adding Static Secondary Contacts

          Rockel is a top-tier client of Zylker traders. Marcus handles communications with Rockel and would like to add Terence, the CTO of Zylker traders to the email conversations. In this case, the emails coming from user address rockel.com should have Terence

        • New Zoho triggers Google Dangerous flag due toabnormal charcters

          Just signed up and doing my first email test. I sent it to my google email account but it got flagged as Dangerous" due abnormal characters. My DNS setup looks ok. Page snips attached Help Please Thanks, Rick DC PowerWorld

        • Is there a API to fetch tasks in a Board/Section

          I am writing a scheduled function that retrieves all the tasks and send an reminder on cliq. I cannot seem to find a API to fetch tasks (by user / board / section) What are the way to fetch tasks?

        • Having trouble fetching contents of Zoho Connect Feeds using the API, requesting alternative API documentation.

          I'm trying to retrieve feed/post data from Zoho Connect using the API but facing challenges with the current documentation. What I've tried: OAuth authentication is working correctly (getting 200 OK responses) Tested multiple endpoints: /pulse/nativeapi/v2/feeds,

        • Adding an Account Name to Tasks/Reminders

          Does anyone know how to add the related account name to a task?  When we look at the list of activities and when the reminders pop up, there is no way of quickly seeing who the account is. 

        • Triggering Zoho Flow on Workdrive File Label

          Right now Im trying to have a zoho flow trigger on the labeling/classification of a file in a folder. Looking at the trigger options they arent great for something like this. File event occurred is probably the most applicable, but the events it has arent

        • SendMail to multiple recipients

          Hi, I'm trying to send an email to a list of recipients.  Right now the "to" field is directed to a string variable. (List variables won't work here). In the string variable, how can I make it work? trying "user@app.com;user2@app.com" or "user@app.com; user2@app.com" just failed to send the emails. Ravid

        • Populate drop down field from another form's subform

          Hello, I found how to do that, but not in case of a subform. I have a Product form that has a subform for unit and prices. A product might have more than one unit. For example, the product "Brocoli" can be sold in unit at 3$ or in box of 10 at 25 $. Both

        • Usar o Inventory ou módulo customizado no CRM para Gestão de Estoque ?

          Minha maior dor hoje em usar o zoho é a gestão do meu estoque. Sou uma empresa de varejo e essa gestão é fundamental pra mim. Obviamente preciso que esse estoque seja visível no CRM, Inicialmente fiz através de módulos personalizados no próprio Zoho CRM,

        • Signup forms behaviour : Same email & multiple submissions

          My use case is that I have a signup form (FormA) that I use in several places on my website, with a hidden field so I can see where the contact has been made from. I also have a couple of other signup forms (FormB and FormC) that slight differences. All

        • getting error in project users api

          Hello, I'm getting a "Given URL is wrong" error when trying to use the Zoho Projects V3 API endpoint for adding users to a project. The URL I'm using is https://projectsapi.zoho.com/api/v3/portal/{portalid}/projects/{projectid}/projectusers/ and it's

        • Change total display format in weekly time logs

          Hi! Would it be possible to display the total of the value entered in the weekly time log in the same format that the user input? This could be an option in the general settings -> display daily timesheet total in XX.XX format or XX:XX.

        • Next Page