Approval Cycles
Approval cycles allow you to select approvers and then capture their decision for each Confluence page.
What are approval cycles?
The approval cycle option (G) in the Workflow Builder is where the review and approval process comes into the picture. This is a critical part of many document workflows, and with Workflows for Confluence, you can easily customize the approval process to include the right people at the right stage of the document management lifecycle.
If you would like a walkthrough of how to create a single or multi-stage approval workflow, please check out the videos listed below:
How approval cycles display on Confluence pages
When a document reaches the approval cycle in a workflow, the status will be clearly visible on the Confluence page (H). As you can see in the image below, if you click the workflow status, it will show you more information about the current approval (i.e. who has approved/rejected the document and who is yet to review it).
Configuration settings
There are a range of configuration options for approval cycles, and in this section, we’ll go through these in more detail.
General
The General configuration settings are where the majority of options can be found.
Let’s take a look through each one in detail.
Configuration Setting | Description |
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Email on Action | Notify specific people when an approver has approved or rejected the Confluence page. |
On Page Edit Options | Select which workflow status you want the page to transition to if it is edited. You will be able to select from the following options in the drop down menu:
Please note, this “On Page Edit” configuration will only be active for this stage of the workflow so you will need to configure the other statuses in a similar way if you want this to apply throughout your workflow. |
On Page Expiration Options | Select which workflow status you want the page to transition to once it expires. This expiration occurs on a timed basis (see the Time to Page Expiration setting below) and you will be able to select from the following options in the drop down menu:
Please note, this “On Page Expiration” configuration will only be active for this stage of the workflow, so you will need to configure the other statuses in a similar way if you want this to apply throughout your workflow. |
Time To Page Expiration | You can select the time period you want the workflow to expire using the selector. |
Email on Expire | Once a page has expired, you may want specific people to be notified. This setting allows you to choose which users are notified when a page expires. |
Email on Transition | When a page transitions to the next stage of a workflow you want want specific people to be notified. This setting allows you to choose which users are notified when a page moves to the next stage of a workflow. |
Approval
In the Approval settings, you can configure how an approval process runs and if there are any specific requirements.
Configuration Setting | Description |
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Approvers (Users) | Select the people you want to be approvers for this document. Please note, this field will display any users in your Confluence instance. |
Approvers (Groups) | Select the Confluence groups that you want to be added as approvers for this document. Please note, this field will display any groups in your Confluence instance. |
Exclude (roles) | Select the roles that you want to be excluded from approving/rejecting an approval stage for instances of your workflow. For example, adding the ‘Page Creator’ role will exclude the page creator from approving/rejecting the approval stage, so this user will differ depending on the page that the workflow is applied on.
Note: When using this feature, it is important to carefully consider the quorum sizes for approvals/rejections. If a numerical quorum size is given that turns out to be greater than the number of non-excluded approvers, the approval stage won’t be able to progress. For example, if you have an approval stage with following settings:
If the workflow is applied to a page and one of the approvers has the excluded role, the approve quorum won’t be able to be met as there are only 2 'available' approvers in this scenario. So, this approval stage can’t transition to approved in its current state. This logic also applies to ‘Per Group’ quorum sizes (see below for details).
|
Allow Additional Approvers | Allows a user to add additional approvers to an approval cycle for a specific instance of a workflow, via the byline window on a Confluence page. |
Approved Quorum Size | The quorum allows you to select the minimum number of approvals required before a page can transition to the next status in a workflow.
|
Rejected Quorum Size | The quorum allows you to select the minimum number of rejections required before a page can transition to the next status in a workflow (e.g. Rejected). |
Await all Approvers | If this option is enabled, the approval cycle cannot be completed without all the approvers completing their review and selecting “Approve” or “Reject”. |
Require Comment on Action | This will require all approvers to add a comment to a page when making their approval decision. |
Require Token on Approval | This will require all approvers to use an Approval Token when making their approval decision. This option is particularly useful for organizations that need verified or authenticated approvals. |
Email Assigned Approvers | Send an automated email to the assigned approvers when a document requires their approval. Please note, this option is on by default and we would strongly recommend it remains activated so your approvers know when documents require their approval. |
Email Page Creator on Action | Send an email notification to the Page Creator once any approval or rejection has been made on the page. |
Extra
The Extra tab allows you to select the colour for the approval cycle status in the workflow. This colour will appear on the Confluence page once the workflow reaches this approval cycle status.
Need support? We’re here to help 🧡
As you can see from the page above, there are many configuration options in Workflows for Confluence. If you have any questions or would like assistance with any of these configuration options, please don’t hesitate to contact our Support team.