Approval Workflow

Overview

Working in a team is important, but it can be time-consuming, especially when working with many tools. Wouldn't it be easier to keep track of deadlines, assign tasks, and monitor progress all in one place? If you're using a Business or Enterprise account, our Approval Workflow can help!

The Approval feature sends requests to collaborators and clients to review the design. The reviewers can open the email or page to preview, comment, and approve the design. As a result, all reviewers must have access to the associated Beefree account. Any user role can participate in the approval process, but some restrictions apply to who can initiate the approval workflow.

Let's take a look at how you can use this feature to improve collaboration in your team!

Requesting Review

After you finish designing, you may want to ask team members for approval. Start by accessing the Approval Workflow feature from anywhere in Beefree. It's available in 3 places:

1. From the Projects tab, you can find an icon on any design's thumbnail.
   
2. The same icon is available in the top left of the navbar while designing a page or email in the builder.
   
3. The details page for your emails and pages also includes a Review tab.
   

Note the approval workflow icon utilizes existing Beefree design statuses. The icon changes automatically depending on where you are in the approval workflow.

Follow the prompts in the Request a review modal. This allows you to create a customized review request message. For emails, you can include a subject and preheader. For pages, you can include a title and meta description.

In the second step, you can choose the reviewers from a list of workspace users from a drop-down list. When you click Send review request, they receive an email and an in-app email notification.

You can request approval for an email or page as many times as you need. For individual reviewers, you can also remove or re-send the request.

Reviewing designs 

The reviewer's email notification provides several options. There are buttons the reviewer can use to:

• Comment, which directs them to the builder with the comment panel open in the sidebar.
• Approve, which directs them to the details page and approves the design. 
• Open the preview, which directs them to the preview URL for the design.

Below these options, the reviewer can view the design directly in their inbox. Note that the design preview for these notifications is a screenshot. As a result, GIFs will display as static in the review request email notification.

The in-app notification redirects reviewers to the design inside the builder. The comment panel is open by default in the sidebar. Reviewers can click on the review icon in the builder banner to approve the design. 

Filtering Options

You can use the Review dropdown in any project folder to filter designs based on review status. This allows you to easily identify which designs still require approval. The filter options include:

• Awaiting my review, which shows any designs requiring your approval.
• Asked by me, which shows any designs where you initiated the approval workflow.

These options are useful if you want to filter based on review workflows you're a part of. However, you may need to filter based on review requests where you aren't involved. In that case, use the Status dropdown to filter based on the following design statuses:

• 🔘 Draft
• 🟡 In review
• 🟢 Approved

You can use these filters in tandem with the Type and Tags filters to further narrow your search.

Approval Management Options

In your workspace's General Settings, you will find two options to manage your approval workflow that provide stricter control over the approval process.

You can use these options to:

• Display manual statuses: This applies to the design statuses of Draft, In review, and Approved, and is turned on by default. If it’s toggled off, users can only modify the design’s status by using the in-app approval process.
• Restrict editing during approval: This feature is toggled off by default. Once toggled on, when a design is approved, only its approvers can make edits. If you are not a reviewer and you make edits, the rest of the team will be notified of the changes.

For more information on how these options work, see our article on Approval Management.