Understanding Approval Workflows
Why Approval Workflows
Approval workflows ensure that important content—like policies, risk assessments, or form submissions—gets reviewed and signed off by the right people before it's published. Without them, anyone with editing permissions could publish changes immediately, which is risky for critical documents like health and safety policies or risk assessments. Approval workflows give you quality control, compliance records, and a clear audit trail of who approved what and when. They work alongside review policies: approvals handle one-time sign-off before publication, while review policies handle recurring scheduled reviews of published content.
How Approval Workflows Work
Approval workflows use approval policies (templates) that define who approves and in what order. Here's the flow:
Create an approval policy in Settings > Governance > Approval Policies
Define stages (e.g. "Department Review" then "Safety Officer Sign-Off")
Assign approvers (individuals or groups) and set how many approvals each stage needs
Apply the policy to content when creating or editing a document, risk assessment, or form—select the policy from the approval policy dropdown
Submit for approval when you're ready—the workflow starts automatically
Stages run in sequence—Stage 1 must complete before Stage 2 starts. Approvers receive notifications and inbox tasks. Once the required number of approvals is met, the stage completes and the next begins.
Result—If all stages approve, the content is approved and can be published. If anyone rejects, the workflow stops and the content goes back to draft. For document drafts, the person who submitted the request can also cancel the workflow while it is still pending, which returns the draft to an editable state.
Stages always proceed in order; you can't skip ahead. If any stage rejects, the entire workflow stops.
Common Questions
Can I change an approval policy after creating it? Yes. Changes don't affect workflows already in progress—they continue using the original policy. New submissions use the updated policy.
What if an approver is on holiday? Assign multiple approvers or use groups so there's always someone available. You can also set required approvals to less than the total (e.g. 1 required from a 3-person group).
Can I have different approval policies for different types of content? Yes. Create as many policies as you need—for example, a simple one-stage policy for procedures and a multi-stage policy for health and safety documents.
Can I request approval without a policy? Yes. For drafts that don't use an approval policy, you can send a one-off approval request directly from the publish screen. See Request a one-off approval.
What's the difference between approval policies and review policies? Approval policies handle one-time sign-off before publication. Review policies handle recurring scheduled reviews of existing published content. You'll often use both—approval before first publish, then regular reviews to keep content current.