Approvals

An approval puts a document or decision through a fixed chain of people, one after another. You build it as a draft, send it, and each approver in turn approves or rejects it.

Building one

A draft approval holds a title, a description, a due date, the project it belongs to, file attachments, and up to five approvers added in order with Add approver. Nothing is saved while you build; the approval only exists once you send it.

The order matters: approvers see the request one at a time, in the order you list them.

Sending it

Send for approval saves the approval and puts it in front of the first approver.

Once sent, the approval can’t be edited. The title, description, due date, attachments and approver list are all locked, for administrators too. If something is wrong after sending, raise a new approval.

How it moves

Only the approver whose stage is active sees Approve and Reject, and they can add a comment with either. Approving passes the request to the next person; when the last approver approves, it is complete.

The first rejection stops the chain, and any later stages are skipped without being asked.

The approvals waiting for you

A project’s Approvals tab shows that project’s open approvals, with decided ones hidden until you tick Show completed. The Approvals page in the sidebar is your own list instead: every stage currently waiting on you across your active projects, with Approve and Reject available right on the row.

Deciding from the row does not take a comment; open the approval if you want to leave one.

Approvals and drawings

Attachments added to an approval also appear on the Files page, named with the approval they belong to and carrying an action to open it.

To put a drawing through a sign-off chain, link its revision to the approval. When the approval concludes, a linked revision with a file and no decision of its own yet is marked Approved or Rejected to match; if several approvals are linked to the same revision, they must all agree before it moves.