A record is stuck in review
When a workflow asks for an approval, it creates a task for somebody. If that somebody is not looking at My Task, the record waits indefinitely.
- A walkthrough video, then how to find the waiting work
- Why My Task can look empty when it is not
- The three kinds of work that land there
- What to do when the person it asked has left
01 · Video
Feature walkthrough
02 · Why
Why do records wait?
When a workflow asks for an approval, it creates a task for somebody. If that somebody is not looking at My Task, the record waits indefinitely.
03 · How
Find the waiting work
- Open My Task from the top of the sidebar. The number beside it is how many things are waiting.
- Expand the groups. Tasks are grouped by age, and the groups start collapsed — including OLDER, which is where anything more than a few days old sits.
- Use Approval, Review and Data Correction to filter to the kind you want.
- Open the task and act on it.
04 · Expected result
The task moves to Completed and the record carries on through its workflow.
05 · Troubleshooting
It was assigned to somebody who has left
An Admin can look at the workflow and change who it asks. The pending task itself stays with the person it was given to.
The record was edited after the request went out
Editing a record replaces its pending approval with a fresh one, so an old request may have been superseded rather than ignored.
Nothing is in My Task, but the record still says it is waiting
Check the workflow is actually switched on — see Turn a workflow on. A workflow that is off does not create tasks.
06 · Notes
Three kinds of work land here, and only one is an approval
| Kind | What it is |
|---|---|
| Approval | A workflow is asking a person to approve or reject. |
| Review | A workflow is asking somebody to look, without blocking. |
| Data Correction | A document failed to process and needs a person. |
Most of what appears here on a new setup is Data Correction, not approvals — those come from documents that failed to read. See A document failed to process.
Notifications also carry approval requests
The bell shows "Approval required — This invoice was flagged by a workflow", with a link straight to it.
07 · FAQ
Common questions
Only if the workflow asked more than one person.
Not on its own. Notifications appear, but nothing escalates.
Check the workflow’s own history — the approval may have been the last step. See See what your workflows did.