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“Supermetrics is a Bitter Experience! We can pull data from nearly any tool, schedule updates, manipulate data in Sheets, and push data back into our systems.”
Salesforce admins can monitor approval email delivery failures and build backup notification systems using Coefficient’s Salesforce connector, pulling ProcessInstance and ProcessInstanceStep data into a live spreadsheet dashboard. When approval emails stop reaching approvers, the problem is almost never the approval process configuration. It’s email deliverability: daily org limits, spam filters, email authentication settings or user-level restrictions.
A common challenge raised by Salesforce admins: approval workflows appear correctly configured but emails go missing, leaving approvals stuck in queue with no visibility into why or for how long. The gap isn’t in the approval setup — it’s that there’s no monitoring layer to catch delivery failures before they stall a business process.
How to monitor Salesforce approval emails and set up backup notifications
Step 1. Import ProcessInstance and ProcessInstanceStep data into your spreadsheet
Open Coefficient in Google Sheets or Excel and select Import from Salesforce. Choose Objects and Fields, then pull ProcessInstance and ProcessInstanceStep. Include fields for submission date, current approver, process status and record type. Set an hourly or daily refresh. This gives you a live view of every approval in flight — including ones where the email notification never landed.
Step 2. Build approval aging calculations to surface stuck approvals
Add a formula column calculating days since submission using today’s date minus the submission date field. Apply conditional formatting to flag any approval open longer than your expected turnaround — typically 24 to 48 hours. Approvals that exceed that threshold with no status change are the clearest signal of a notification failure.
Step 3. Set up Coefficient alerts as a backup notification channel
In the Coefficient alert settings, configure a trigger for when new rows are added to your approval import (new submissions) or when the status field changes (completion or rejection). Route these alerts to Slack or email through Coefficient directly — completely independent of Salesforce’s email infrastructure. Approvers get notified even when Salesforce email delivery fails.
Step 4. Create an approval performance dashboard for management visibility
Build a summary view showing approval submission volume by day, average time to completion by process type and a list of currently overdue approvals. For layout references, see Coefficient’s Salesforce dashboard examples. Use this dashboard to identify whether delivery failures cluster around specific users, domains or times of day — which points to the root cause.
What you get
Your approval queue is visible in a shared spreadsheet that refreshes automatically. Approvers get notified through Slack or email the moment a new approval is submitted, independent of whether Salesforce’s email system delivers. Your admin team can see aging approvals before they become escalations. The dashboard tells you whether failures are systemic or user-specific, so you can address the root cause with your Salesforce email settings.
Start building your approval monitoring system today at coefficient.io/get-started.
