Approval Workflow

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Overview

The Approval Workflow sends review requests to collaborators and clients. Reviewers can open the email or page to preview, comment, and approve it. You can include RGE Studio users and external stakeholders in a review. Any user role can take part in the approval process. A team member must start the workflow.

Enterprise users can also create multi-step approval workflow. See Multi-Step Approval Flow for details.

Requesting Review

After you finish designing, you can ask team members for approval. Start the Approval Workflow from anywhere in RGE Studio. It's available in three places:

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

The approval workflow icon uses the existing RGE Studio design statuses. The icon changes shape and color to match the approval status.

Follow the prompts in the Request a review modal. Choose reviewers from the drop-down list of workspace users, or type an email address. Enterprise users can create multi-step reviews at this point.

You can also include a custom review request message. For emails, add a subject and preheader. For pages, add a title and meta description.

When you click Send review request, reviewers receive in-app and email notifications.

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. Business plans can have up to four ongoing review requests per workspace.

Approval Groups

Approval Groups let you add many reviewers at once. Select a saved group instead of adding users one by one. Groups are based on past review requests sent in the workspace.

When you add two or more users from the same workspace to a review, RGE Studio saves them as a group. The group appears in the reviewer drop-down the next time you send a review for that workspace. Groups update over time based on usage.

The reviewer drop-down menu has two sections:

• Groups - Groups appear first in the list, with the most recently used at the top. If you type a name, RGE Studio also shows up to three groups that include that user.
• Internal users - This section lists all workspace members.

When you pick a group, RGE Studio shows everyone in it. A group, like an individual user, can appear only once per step. It does not appear again in other steps of the same review. RGE Studio does not create a group when you add external reviewers.

Reviewing designs

The reviewer's email notification includes buttons to:

• Comment, which opens the builder with the comment panel open in the sidebar.
• Approve, which opens the details page and approves the design.

Below these buttons, the reviewer can view the design in their inbox. The design preview in the notification is a screenshot, so GIFs display as static images in the review request email.

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

Filtering Options

Use the Review dropdown in any project folder to filter designs by review status. This helps you find designs that still need approval. The filter options include:

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

These options filter by review workflows you are part of. To filter regardless of your involvement, use the Status dropdown to filter by these design statuses:

• 🔘 Draft
• 🟡 In review
• 🟢 Approved

You can combine these filters with the Type and Tags filters to narrow your search.

Approval Management Options

Your workspace's General Settings include options to manage your approval workflow.

You can use these options to:

• Display manual statuses: This option applies to the design statuses Draft, In review, and Approved. It is toggled on by default. When it is toggled off, users can change a design's status only through the in-app approval process.
• Restrict editing during approval: This option is toggled off by default. When it is toggled on and a reviewer approves a design, only reviewers can edit it. A non-reviewer can click Unlock editing. This discards the approval and notifies all reviewers.

For more information, see Approval Management.