How can I fire the "Submit for Approval" button on the lead form via the api?

Question

I've recently been asked by a customer to mimic the 'Submit for Approval' button on the lead form via the api for various leads. I can see that this is a standard button and I assume that the process behind it is also standard(?). Does anyone know what api call would allow me to do this?

Any light shed on this would be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can use Force.com REST APIs to get the list of All Approval Processes, Submit a Record for Approval, approve a Record, reject a Record or for bulk Approvals. The Getting Started with Force.com REST API guide has detailed documentation with examples and you might want to check it out.

Use the Process Approvals resource to submit a record or a collection of records for approval. Each call takes an array of requests. The entity must support an approval process and an approval process must have already been defined.

In the following example, the record "001D000000I8mIm" is submitted for approval process "PTO_Request_Process" by skipping its entry criteria on behalf of submitter "005D00000015rZy."

Example request body submit.json file

 {
    "requests" : [{
    "actionType": "Submit",
    "contextId": "001D000000I8mIm",
    "nextApproverIds": ["005D00000015rY9"],
    "comments":"this is a test",
    "contextActorId": "005D00000015rZy",
    "processDefinitionNameOrId" : "PTO_Request_Process",
    "skipEntryCriteria": "true"}]
    }

Example JSON response body

    [ { 
      "actorIds" : [ "005D00000015rY9IAI" ],
       "entityId" : "001D000000I8mImIAJ",
       "errors" : null,
       "instanceId" : "04gD0000000Cvm5IAC",
       "instanceStatus" : "Pending",
       "newWorkitemIds" : [ "04iD0000000Cw6SIAS" ],
       "success" : true } ]