Skip to content
WorkWizard Help Center

Approval Routing

Define a sequence of approval teams for form submissions.

Defining an Approval Route

Section titled “Defining an Approval Route”
Video walkthrough · 1:20Require approvalsSubmissions that need sign-off, routed to the right people

Walkthrough of “Defining an Approval Route”

  1. Navigate to the Forms page and select the form.
  2. Click the Approval Routing list item.
  3. Click Add Approval Team and select the Teams, Roles, or Users that can approve the submission.
  4. Click Save. You can repeat this process to create a multi-step approval chain.

A step can name teams, roles and users together, and any one of them is enough to approve it — the step is satisfied by the first person who acts, not by all of them. Each step needs at least one approver of some kind.

Steps run in order, and each new step is added after the one before it, so a chain is built front to back. Step one must be approved before step two is created at all.

How Role-Based Approvers Are Chosen

Section titled “How Role-Based Approvers Are Chosen”

Naming a role on an approval step does not send the submission to everyone holding that role. WorkWizard resolves it to one specific group of people, and knowing how avoids a lot of confusion about why the “wrong” manager was asked to approve.

It starts from the submission’s location. If the submission has no location, it uses the first location answer on the form; failing that, the submitter’s own team or location. From there:

  1. It walks up the hierarchy to the first team above the submission that contains someone with the named role. Only the people on that one team are asked. A team higher up with the same role is not asked, and neither is a parallel team elsewhere in the org.
  2. If no team above the submission has anyone in that role, it follows the role’s Reports To chain and tries again with the next role up.
  3. If that still finds nobody, the submission goes to your organization’s admins and owners, choosing the closest one it can find.

The practical consequence: a submission from a store is approved by that store’s own district manager, not by every district manager in the company. If approvals are reaching someone unexpected, the usual cause is a gap in the hierarchy — the nearest team above the submission has nobody in the named role, so the search climbed past it. See Reporting Lines.

The Approval Process

Section titled “The Approval Process”
Video walkthrough · 1:04Approve a submissionReview what the team sent in, then sign it off

Walkthrough of “The Approval Process”

How a submission moves through approval A submission comes in and waits under Tasks then Approvals. The approver rejects it, rejects it asking for changes, or approves it. A plain rejection ends it. Asking for changes sends it back to the submitter, who edits and resubmits, starting the chain again at step one. An approval either moves it on to the next approvers or, if that was the last step, completes it. Someone submits the form It waits for approval Tasks › Approvals Rejected The submission is finished Sent back for changes Approved They edit and resubmit Was that the last step? Complete or Late, if past its due date Reject Reject + request changes Approve Yes Starts again at step one No — on to the next approvers
  • Reviewing submissions: anything waiting on you appears on the Tasks page under the Approvals tab.
  • Asking for changes: rejecting with Request Changes is the only rejection the submitter can recover from. Without it, the submission is finished.
  • Approval history: every pass a submission has made is listed at the top of the submission itself.
  • Admin override: an owner or admin can approve or reject at any point, skipping the rest of the chain.

What Happens at Each Step

Section titled “What Happens at Each Step”

Approving a step that is not the last one creates the next step and notifies its approvers. It does not notify the submitter — approval emails only reach the submitter when the final step is approved and the submission is finished. On a three-step chain, the submitter hears nothing until step three is signed off.

Rejecting requires a reason, and it ends the chain immediately wherever it happens. A rejection at step one of three does not fall through to steps two and three; the submission is rejected outright and the submitter is told straight away.

Request Changes is a separate option on a rejection, and it is the one that matters. Reject without it and the submission is a dead end that nobody can revive. Reject with it and the submitter can edit and resubmit — which starts the chain again from step one. Each round is kept separately in the approval history, so you can see every pass a submission made.

Super Approve is available to owners and admins. It skips the entire remaining chain and finalises the submission in a single action, so a three-step chain can be closed from step one. Admins and owners can also act on any pending step even when they are not named on it.

A submission is only really finished at final approval. That is the point at which it becomes Complete — or Late, if it was submitted after its due date — and the point at which the form’s submission count updates and any triggers and sync integrations fire. A submission sitting mid-chain has not fired anything yet.

Approval request emails are always delivered, even to an approver who has turned approval emails off in their profile. See Notifications you cannot turn off.

Editing and Deleting Approval Steps

Section titled “Editing and Deleting Approval Steps”

Approval routing can only be changed by an owner or admin. The Can Edit form permission deliberately does not extend to it — someone who can edit a form’s questions still cannot change who approves it.

Deleting a step from the middle of a chain is safe by comparison: the chain closes up, and any submissions waiting at the deleted step move to the step that followed it.