Deals stall for reasons that have nothing to do with the customer. A discount needs sign-off, the request goes to an inbox, and the person who has to decide is in Slack looking at something else. Moving the decision to where the approver already is closes that gap — provided the decision still lands back in Salesforce with its history intact. Approve where they are. Record where it counts.
Trusted by 500+ organizations — including revenue teams whose deal desks stopped being the reason a quarter slipped.
What We Automate
The decision itself is almost never the bottleneck. Everything around it is.
An email notification arrives among two hundred others while the approver spends their day in Slack. The decision takes ninety seconds and the latency before it is taken is measured in days, for no reason connected to the deal.
Posting 'this needs approval' into a channel means no individual owns it. Each person assumes another is handling it, and the request ages until the submitter chases it personally.
The approver gets a record link and nothing else, so approving means opening Salesforce, finding the deal, checking the margin and the history, and deciding. That context-gathering is the actual cost, and it is what makes people defer the task.
Someone says yes in a direct message and the record is updated later, by somebody else, from memory. The deal moves, but the approval history does not reflect who actually decided or when — which is the one thing an auditor will ask about.
The request sits. There is no timer, no reminder and no path to a delegate, so the only escalation mechanism available is the submitter getting annoyed enough to walk over.
Thresholds set years ago now catch routine deals, so the majority of approvals are rubber stamps. Every one of those trains the approver to click yes without reading, which is exactly what the control existed to prevent.
Salesforce approval automation in Slack means an approval request reaches the approver in Slack, the decision — approve, reject, or comment — is taken there, and the outcome syncs back to Salesforce so the approval history stays complete for audit and reporting. Salesforce remains the system of record throughout; Slack is the surface the decision happens on, not a second place the decision is stored.
What the platform does. Salesforce supports acting on approval requests from within Slack, with settings controlling whether approvers and submitters are notified there and an admin able to turn Slack notification delivery off centrally. The exact surface differs between Flow-based approval processes and Advanced Approvals, and has changed across recent releases — Salesforce documents the current behaviour here. We confirm what your org and release actually support during discovery rather than assuming it, because this is the fastest-moving capability in this cluster.
What Twopir does. We design the routing so requests reach a named approver with the context attached, set thresholds so the control catches what it should and stops rubber-stamping what it should not, build the escalation and delegation path, and verify that every decision writes back cleanly to the approval history.
What the client gets. Approvals that clear inside the working day, and an audit trail that survives being asked about. We work with growing, mid-market, and enterprise organizations that need help with complex CRM implementations, integrations, and business system challenges.
The pattern is the same every time: attach enough context that the decision can be made without opening another system, and route to a person who is accountable for making it.
| Approval type | What the approver needs in the message | The control that matters | Risk if mis-set |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discount and pricing | Deal value, requested discount, margin impact, and what the last approved discount for this account was. | A threshold that reflects current deal sizes, not the ones from three years ago. | Set too low, every deal needs approval and approvers stop reading. |
| Non-standard contract terms | The clause that differs, the standard it departs from, and who has accepted this variation before. | Routing to legal or finance by the type of term, not by deal size. | Routed by value alone, and a small deal with a dangerous indemnity clears unexamined. |
| Quote and order sign-off | Line items, totals, delivery commitments, and any dependency on stock or capacity. | Sequencing, so an order is not approved before the terms it rests on. | Parallel approvals that let an order clear while its contract is still open. |
| Spend and expenses | Amount, category, budget remaining, and the policy limit being tested. | Delegation, so absence does not stop the business. | No delegate configured, and everything queues behind one person's annual leave. |
| Access and permission requests | What access, to what data, for how long, and who is accountable for revoking it. | An expiry, so access granted in a hurry does not become permanent. | Approved indefinitely, and the access review finds it two years later. |
Approval design patterns from delivered engagements
Routed by the rule that actually matters for that approval type — value, term type, budget owner — to a named individual rather than a channel. An approval addressed to a group is an approval nobody owns.
The amount, the margin, the variance from standard and the relevant history travel with the request. Removing the need to go and look is what turns a deferred task into a decided one.
Approve, reject and comment write back so the approval history is complete and reportable. A decision that lives only in a chat log is not an audit trail, and it is the failure mode that matters most here.
Unacknowledged requests age into a reminder, then to a delegate or an escalation path, so absence does not become a bottleneck and the submitter never has to chase in person.
Six workstreams. The second one frequently produces the largest improvement, because most stalled approval processes are catching far more than they were designed to.
Every approval process currently running, how long each takes, how many are approved without comment, and how many are effectively rubber stamps. The rubber-stamp rate is the most useful number nobody has.
Re-setting the criteria so the control catches genuinely unusual requests. A process that stops reviewing routine deals both speeds the business up and makes the remaining approvals meaningful.
Named approvers with delegates and an escalation path, so absence does not stop the business and nothing waits on a channel nobody owns.
What travels with the request so the decision can be taken in place — the single biggest lever on how long an approval sits.
Testing that every decision path lands correctly in the approval history, including rejections and recalls, because those are the ones that get tested least and asked about most.
A baseline before and a measure after, so the improvement is demonstrable rather than anecdotal.
Four phases. The first two often deliver most of the benefit without touching Slack at all, which is worth knowing before you scope the project around the integration.
Cycle time per approval type, volume, and the proportion approved without comment. Where the rubber-stamp rate is high, the problem is the threshold rather than the channel — and we will say so before selling you an integration.
Re-set thresholds, remove approval steps that no longer earn their place, and assign delegates. Moving a bad approval process into Slack produces a faster bad approval process.
What context travels with it, who it goes to by name, what happens on silence, and how rejection and recall behave — which are the paths least tested and most asked about.
Configured against your release, tested on every decision path including the unhappy ones, and measured against the original baseline so the change is demonstrable.
Delivered Slack engagements on Salesforce. The figures are the ones published on each case study, with their original scope intact.
The goal was never to replace Salesforce — it’s still the system of record. We just made sure the team never had to leave Slack to know what was happening in their pipeline.
Workflow alerts built so stage changes, closed-won and renewals fire the moment a deal moves — the same routing discipline an approval needs, applied to deal events.
Case notifications and swarming routed to the people accountable for acting, for a workforce that is almost entirely away from a desk.
The principle that governs approval design: Slack surfaces the decision, it does not store it. Only authorised users update records, and the approval history lives in the CRM where it can be reported on and audited.
Moving a broken approval process into Slack gives you a faster broken approval process. The sequencing matters more here than anywhere else in this cluster.
The proportion of approvals granted without comment tells you whether the control is doing anything. Where it is high, the fix is the threshold, and we will tell you that before selling an integration.
The cost of an approval is almost never the decision. It is going to find the information needed to make it, and removing that is what changes cycle time.
Rejections, recalls and reassignments are the least-tested paths and the most likely to be asked about in an audit. We verify each of them writes back correctly, not just the approve case.
An approval process with no delegate is a business that stops when one person takes leave. It is a five-minute configuration that almost nobody has done.
Approval behaviour in Slack differs between Flow approval processes and Advanced Approvals and has moved across recent releases. We check what your org actually supports rather than promising from a release note.
Yes. Approvers can act on Salesforce approval requests from within Slack — approve, reject and comment — and the decision syncs back to Salesforce so the approval history stays complete for audit and reporting. Admins control whether approvers and submitters are notified in Slack, and Slack notification delivery can be turned off centrally. The exact surface differs between Flow-based approval processes and Advanced Approvals and has changed across recent releases, so we confirm what your org and release support during discovery rather than assuming it.
That is the requirement that governs the whole design. Salesforce stays the system of record: the decision taken in Slack writes back so the approval history is complete and reportable. A decision that exists only in a chat log is not an audit trail, which is why we test every path — including rejections and recalls, which get tested least and asked about most.
It is a fair concern, and the honest answer is that the risk already exists wherever thresholds are set too low. If most approvals are routine, approvers are already clicking yes without reading, and reducing the friction makes that faster. That is why we measure the rubber-stamp rate before we move anything, and re-set thresholds so the remaining approvals are ones that genuinely warrant a look.
That is a delegation question, and it is the most common gap we find. A process with no configured delegate is a business that stops when one person is away. We build delegation and an escalation path on silence, so an unacknowledged request ages into a reminder and then to someone else rather than waiting indefinitely.
They should not, and this is worth checking rather than assuming. Actions taken through the Salesforce apps run in Salesforce in the acting user's context and follow their access rights. What needs deliberate design is how much record detail the request message itself carries, because a message posted somewhere broad is a separate access surface from the record. We treat the context attached to an approval as an access decision.
It depends entirely on where your time currently goes, which is why we baseline cycle time per approval type before making changes and measure again afterwards. Where the delay is latency — the request waiting in an inbox while the approver works in Slack — the improvement is usually substantial. Where the delay is a genuine review needing information gathering, the gain comes from attaching context rather than from changing the channel, and we will tell you which case you are in.
It can change which capabilities are available and how they are configured, which is precisely why we verify against your org and release rather than working from a general answer. The design questions — routing, context, delegation, escalation, write-back verification — are the same either way; the implementation details are not.
A discovery call covers which approvals stall, how long they take, and what proportion are approved without comment. You leave with a cycle-time baseline and a view on whether your thresholds or your channel are the problem.
Decisions where the approver is, records where they belong
