How to create approval workflow in SharePoint 2013

When a new document is added to the doc library, a task email is sent to the approvers to review the doc. The due date for the task can be set in the workflow. If one of the approvers, approves the doc, the workflow is ended.

Go to the document library, and from the ribbon, click on Workflow settings – Add a workflow

In Add a workflow page, select Approval workflow and enter a name for the workflow

Note – The out of box workflows are of SharePoint 2010 template. To use SharePoint 2013 template, the workflow has to be created with SharePoint Designer 2013. Also, if there are no approval workflow templates, go to Site Settings – Site collection features and activate Workflow.

Set the workflow to be started manually and when an item is created.

As approvers, a person or group can be set. If there is more than one stage of approval, a new stage can be added and the action can be set to follow the parallel or serial sequence. In parallel sequence, the approval stages will happen together and in serial sequence, one stage would be completed at a time. The duration for each task can be set in days/weeks/months.

The document can be rejected, if any one of the approvers rejects it or if changes are made to the document before the end of the workflow. The content approval status can be updated based on the approver's action.

The approver would get a task notification email. From the email, the user can click on the Open task form and the task form would come up. 

The approver can open up the doc from the task form, from the notification ribbon, as marked. The approver can enter their comments and approve or reject the doc. If required, the task can be reassigned to someone else.

Based on the action taken by the approver, the task is updated in the task list. The task is marked complete and the workflow ends.