Approve or reject a request

Decide on an approval request from Approvals in Studio, from the email you received or from Slack, and see what the workflow does next.

By the end of this page, you will have recorded your decision on a request, and the workflow will have continued or stopped.

Before you start

Your email address must be in the step's approver list. Owners and admins can also decide requests that name someone else; see Who can decide.
To decide in Studio, sign in to Studio. To decide from an email, you do not need to sign in.

Decide in Studio

Open Approvals

Select Approvals in the sidebar. It opens the Runs page on its Approvals tab, which lists the runs waiting for a decision.

In Studio: Approvals > Approve. Each waiting run has Reject and Approve buttons at the end of its row.

Select the run's name to open it. The approval step shows the facts the workflow gathered under From the workflow, then Approvers, when it was Asked and when it is Due. It also says what each choice does: Approve continues from the next step, and Reject records a rejection.

Approve

Select Approve. One run is approved in one click, and the run continues straight away. An approval cannot be undone.

Or reject, with a reason

Select Reject. In Reject this run?, add a note in Reason (optional), such as "Duplicate of bill 4471", then select Reject. The reason is kept with the run.

Decide on several runs at once

On the Approvals tab, tick the runs you want, then select Approve or Reject at the bottom of the list. Approving several runs asks you to confirm first. Rejecting several runs uses one reason for all of them. If one decision cannot be recorded, for example because someone else decided first, the others still go through and Studio tells you which failed.

Decide from an email

Open the email

The email names the workflow and step, says why your approval is needed, and shows the deadline.

Choose approve or reject

Select the approve or reject button in the email. A page opens titled Confirm approval or Confirm rejection.

Confirm

Select Approve or Reject on that page. Nothing is recorded until you do, so a link opened by mistake, or by your email scanner, does not decide the request.

Each email link belongs to you and works once. If someone else decided first, or the time ran out, the page says the approval is no longer pending.

Decide in Slack

Open the request in the Slack channel and select approve or reject. Slack checks that the email on your Slack profile matches an address on the approver list. If it does not, you see "You are not an approver for this request." After the decision, the message changes to show it, depending on how the step is set up.

Who can decide

Person	Studio	Email	Slack
A listed approver	Yes	Yes, from their own email	Yes, if their Slack profile email matches
An owner or admin who is not listed	Yes, recorded as an override	No	No
Anyone else	No	No	No

What happens next

Approved: the run continues from the next step. The approval step on the run shows Approved, who decided and how they were asked.
Rejected: by default the run stops and shows Failed, with your reason. The workflow can be built to continue after a rejection; if so, the next steps run instead.
The first decision wins. Once one approver decides, the request closes for everyone else.

Check it worked

The run is no longer on the Approvals tab.
On the run, the approval step shows Approved or Rejected and Decided by.
Decisions made in Studio also appear on the Audit trail tab. See Audit trail.

If something goes wrong

"Could not record your decision": someone else may have decided first, the time may have run out, or the run may have been stopped. Open the run to see its current status.
"This approval is assigned to someone else": your email is not on the approver list, and you are not an owner or admin.
The request never reached you: see An approval request did not arrive.