Understanding Criteria for Approval Framework Processes

Criteria is an entity that evaluates to true or false. It uses transaction-specific information to determine if a transaction requires approvals and follows the approval paths and steps that evaluate to true. To set the context for the criteria, the approval process definition provides the transaction keys as bind values.

Criteria is set up at three levels as shown in this table:

Set Up Level	Description
Process Definition ID	This criteria is used to determine which Process Definition ID to use to process the approval.
Path	This criteria is used to determine if the approval will follow the path.
Step	This criteria is applied to the individual Approvers defined for the step.

There are 3 different types of criteria you can apply to an approval process.

Criteria Type	Description
Always True	No criteria is needed, the approval process will always be triggered.
Application Class	An application class contains the logic used to determine if the workflow approval task evaluates as true.
User Entered	Criteria is based on record and field combinations. The criteria can be either value or monetary-based. A logical operator and a value are used to evaluate the condition.