Everyone talking about Social Enterprise, Winter’12 release introduced “Chatter Approvals”. Approvals in Chatter are really fun and new social way of approving items, right inside and from Chatter feeds.

For more details about Chatter approvals, please check this Salesforce documentation.

Next, we will see how its social and fun to have Approvals in Chatter.

Exploring – Leave approvals in Chatter !

Manager approving leaves is common scenario in most of organizations. I tried exploring the same here with new Chatter approvals.

Leave management done using Salesforce

This great team uses Chatter for managing CRM and HRM operations like Leave management.

Leave Sobject

A simple custom Sobject called Leave is created to apply & approve leaves. Here are 4 key fields in it

• Type(PickList) : EL, ML, etc (Earned Leave, Medical Leave)

• Reason : Why this leave is required.

• From Date & To Date.

Approval Process

We created standard approval process via Setup > App Setup > Create > Workflow & Approvals > Approval Process.

This approval process sends the record to approval to User’s manager. No more complexity for sake of fun.

Setting up Chatter Approvals

Here are the steps to make sure your org is ready for Chatter approvals.

1. Enable approvals in chatter here, Setup > Customize > Chatter > Settings :

   

2. Enable Feed Tracking for Leave sobject here, Setup > Customize > Chatter > Feed Tracking.

3. Chatter Approvals lets you create “Post Templates” for Chatter feed post. In a Chatter Post Template, one can pick upto 5 fields from Sobject, those fields will be shown in chatter feed post. Create a Post Tempalte for “Leave” sobject here :

4. In Chatter “Post Template” I selected 4 most relevant fields to a leave i.e. From Date, To Date, Leave Type and Reason. As shown here :

   

All set now to play with Chatter Approvals in leave. Next, we will see all this in action.

Leave approval fun via Chatter Approvals 🙂

Guys, next story is going to revolve around 3 characters in an enterprise. So, lets meet them :

Meet the cast – employees !

Mr. Bad Ass, aka Boss/Manager

Mr. Depressoo, reports to Mr. BadAss

Mrs. Frustoo, also reporting to Mr. BadAss

Mr. Depresso wants Leave next week 😕

Mr. Depresso is a star performer working at least 60 hours a week to keep customers & more importantly Mr. Bad Ass happy. On the festive occasion of Diwali, he wants a break to meet family and friends. so applied for Leave of few days using “Leave” sobject in Salesforce CRM.

He creates a leave record and submits it for Approval :

Mr. Bad Ass Boss feels such leave plan is imaginary, it’s a Joke 🙂

As we have chatter approvals enabled Mr. Bad Ass get an update in his chatter feed about Mr. Depresso looking forward for a leave. So he adds a chatter comment, and laughs out on this leave request.

Mr. Depressoo tries convincing boss about seriousness of Matter !

He writes back a chatter comment..

Mr. Bad Ass boss is not in mood to understand, so he rejects from Chatter itself !

This is how a rejected leave would look in chatter. Mr. Bad Ass boss also added condolence chatter comment :

Mrs. Frustoo a silent watcher of all this drama, finally speaks up !

Mrs. Frustoo is a kind hearted lady, suffering from same tortures of Mr. Bad ass. So, she decided to cheer up Mr. Depresoo..

Moral of the Chatter Approvals – Story !

Doing Approvals via chatter is really social and fun. It really adds nice context to discuss the approval in chatter feeds. But but but, one needs to be careful about what’s going to be discussed in Approval’s chatter comments, if wrong information is shared to wrong guys, it might be sarcastic fun.

Looking forward for your views and comments !