Ask someone to approve

01 · Video

Feature walkthrough

02 · Why

Why do we have this?

Automation should stop where judgement starts. This is the step that hands over, and because the decision is recorded on the record with a note, you can answer "who approved this?" later.

03 · Use cases

04 · How

Add an approval step

1. Press ADD STEP and choose Approval under Logic & Control.
2. Type the Title first. It is what the approver sees in their inbox.
3. Write the Description — say what you want them to check.
4. Choose the Mode: Single Approver, Multiple Approvers, or Auto Approve.
5. Choose the Approval Type: Any One (first answer settles it), All Required, or Majority (more than half).
6. Choose the Approvers — the whole organization, a department, a job title, or named people.
7. Optionally, under Due date and escalation, give it a due date, reminders and people to bring in when nobody acts (see below).
8. Add steps to the APPROVED and REJECTED branches if you want something to follow.

Due date, reminders and escalation

Every step that gives someone a task (Approval, Review, Coding review and Create task) has a Due date and escalation section. A sentence at the top says the whole thing back in words, so you can check it before you save.

1. Due in — an amount and a unit: working days, days or hours, counted from when the task is sent. Leave it empty for no due date.
2. Calendar — Workspace default, or one of your calendars from Settings › Time. Working days skip weekends and that calendar’s holidays. With Workspace default, each task counts on the calendar of its record’s company, in that company’s time zone.
3. Reminders — sent to whoever has the task, a set time before or after it is due. Your workspace allows a limited number; the section shows how many are left.
4. If nobody acts — escalation steps, in order, counted from the due date: after so long, add someone, move the task to them, or just tell them. Pick a person, a job title, a department or the workspace owner.
5. When nobody acts after the last step (approvals only) — Keep waiting, or Reject it. Reject it waits one more interval after the last step — as long as the step before it waited — then rejects, and the workflow carries on down its REJECTED branch.

Example: due in 2 working days; 1 working day late a Finance manager is added; 3 working days late it moves to Rina; 2 working days after that, if nobody has answered, it is rejected.

05 · Expected result

The step appears with two branches under it. When the workflow runs, the person gets a task in My Tasks reading:

Approval Request: Check invoice HD-1001 before payment · muttayyab · Help Docs Invoices · Just now

The workflow waits. When they answer, it continues down the matching branch, and the decision and note are kept against the record.

06 · Troubleshooting and notes

Majority means more than half

With three approvers, two approvals approve it, and two rejections reject it, because more than half can no longer approve. There is still no "any 2 of 5": the choices are Any One, All Required and Majority.

An escalation step names someone who left

The step has nobody to go to, so the task stays where it is. The run is not stopped: that step is skipped and logged, and the next one still runs on time. The section warns you when a step names someone who is no longer in the workspace — pick someone else.

Auto Approve approves without asking anyone

It is for keeping the shape of a process in place while switching the human step off.

Choosing the whole organization or a department clears the rest

Job titles and named people can be mixed; those two cannot.

Who is told, and how

Approvers get an in-app notification and the task in their inbox. Reminders, escalations and overdue notices also go by email; each has its own switch under Settings › Notifications.

07 · FAQ

Common questions