Creating Approval Policies

Why Approval Policies

Approval policies define who needs to review and approve content before it's published. Once you create a policy, you can apply it to documents, risk assessments, or form submissions so they go through proper review. This keeps quality high, ensures compliance, and creates an audit trail. You'll need to know who should approve, how many stages your process needs, and how many approvals are required at each stage.

How to Create an Approval Policy

1. Go to Settings > Governance and select the Approval Policies tab

2. Click New Template

3. Enter a Template Name (e.g. "Health & Safety Policy Review" or "Risk Assessment Approval")

4. (Optional) Add a Description explaining when to use this policy—helps content authors choose the right one

5. Configure your first stage:

   • Give it a Stage Name (e.g. "Department Manager Review")

   • Add Approvers using the selector—you can add individual users and/or groups

   • Set Required approvals (1 = any single approver can advance; 2+ = consensus; all = everyone must approve)

6. Click Add Another Stage for multi-stage workflows—stages run in order from top to bottom

   • You can reorder stages by editing and saving

7. (Optional) If your site has child sites, toggle Share with child sites to let them use this policy—they can't edit or delete it

8. Click Create Template

Your new approval policy appears in the list and is ready to assign to content.

Archive, restore, or delete an approval policy

Archive a policy when it has been used in workflows and you no longer want new content to use it. Archived policies stay linked to existing records and in-progress workflows continue, but the policy can't be edited and new content can't use it. Delete a policy only when it has never been used and is still active. For the shared pattern, see Archive, restore, and permanently delete records.

1. Go to Settings > Governance and select the Approval Policies tab.

2. Use the filter bar to narrow the list: All, Active, Archived, This Site, Inherited, or Shared with Child Sites.

3. For an active policy that has been used, click Archive to retire it without breaking existing workflows.

4. For an archived policy, click Restore to return it to active use. It becomes available for new documents, forms, or policies again. Existing workflows and references are unchanged.

5. For a policy that has never been used, click Delete to remove it completely.

Archived policies cannot be deleted. Restore the policy first if you need to remove it, then delete it while it is active.