Approver record access and administrator responses to requests
Key Takeaway
An assigned approver must have read access to the record to complete an approval request.
In a Classic Approval Process, an approval request only works if the person who must act on it can see the record behind it. Users with broad data permissions can approve or reject requests that were never assigned to them. Salesforce also tracks who a request was assigned to and who actually responded. What happens when a request comes back to an earlier step depends on that history.
Record access for assigned approvers
An assigned approver must have read access to the record in the approval request.
For example, imagine a user who can't view expense records. That user can't view expense approval requests either.
Record access also controls who can complete a request. An assigned approver without record access can still get email approval notifications, but they can't complete the request until someone grants them record access.