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 (A) 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 (B). 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. They can be found in the right hand sidebar when you select an approval step.

Let’s take a look through each one in detail.

Configuration Section	Configuration Setting	Description
Approvers	Select approvers	Select the user(s) and/or group(s) you want to select as approvers for this document. Please note, this field will display all users and groups in your Confluence instance.
Approvers	Select roles to exclude from approval	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. Page creator - Confluence role Last author - Confluence role Official version owner - Workflows for Confluence role. This is the creator of the latest official version for the workflow applied to your page. Page owner - Confluence role 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: 3 approvers set; A numerical, approve quorum of 3 (rather than using a quorum of ‘All’); 1 excluded role 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). Enabling ‘Allow Additional Approvers’ would allow the above scenario to be rectified (if ‘Per Group’ quorum sizes are not being used). If a quorum size is set to ‘All’, the quorum will change dynamically if there are excluded approvers; the excluded users don’t need to approve for the quorum to be met. If the approve/reject quorum is set to ‘All’, and all approvers become excluded, the approval stage will be ‘stuck’ (unless additional approvers are allowed). If the approve quorum is set to ‘Per Group’, and an individual group quorum size is set to ‘All’, and all approvers become excluded, the group will be ‘stuck’ (also, adding additional approvers won’t allow the group’s quorum to be met).
Approvers	Enable approval management macro	This enables management of approvers for this given approval step using our macro, Workflows Approval Management Macro. With this macro on a page and this option checked, users will be able to dynamically set the approvers required for a given step from the page itself. Learn more by taking a look at the Workflows Approval Management Macro page.
Approvers	Enable additional approvers	Allows a user to manage additional approvers to an approval cycle for a specific instance of a workflow, via the byline window on a Confluence page. Learn more by taking a look at the Managing Additional Approvers page.
Approvers	Require two factor authentication	This will require all approvers to use an Approval Token as additional verification when making their approval decision. This option is particularly useful for organizations that need verified or authenticated approvals.
Approval settings	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. If you select "All" then all the users must approve the page for it to transition. If you choose at least one user group, “Per Group” will also be available. This option will allow you to set approved quorum size for each user group selected, e.g. you could define your approval to require 2 users from `hr-users` and 1 user from `finance-users` for the transition to take place.
Approval settings	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).
Approval settings	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”. Note that in this case the quorums are still respected, with the rejection quorum taking precedence. If neither quorum is met, it is approved or rejected based on whether there are more approved or reject actions.
Approval settings	Require comment	This will require all approvers to add a comment to a page when making their approval decision.
Approval notifications	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.
Approval notifications	Send approval reminders	Enabling this will enable approval reminders for this approval step. Approval reminders can be configured at the global level, and more information can be found at Notifications.
Approval notifications	Email on approval action	Notify specific people when any individual approver has approved or rejected the Confluence page.
Transition options	Transition on page edit	If checked, this will enable automated workflow transitions when the page is edited, and enable the below configuration option.
Transition options	Transition to status	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: Current Previous Initial Approved Rejected Please note, this transition 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.
Transition options	Email on page 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. These emails will be sent for user triggered transitions, page edit triggered transitions, and time-based expiry triggered transitions.
Expiration options	Expire approval after set time	If checked, this will enable automated workflow transitions based on a time period after entering the status, and enable the below configuration options.
Expiration options	Time until expiration	You can select the time period after which you want the workflow to expire using the dropdown.
Expiration options	Transition to status on expiration	Select which workflow status you want the page to transition to when it expires. You will be able to select from the following options: Current Previous Initial Approved Rejected Please note, this 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.
Expiration options	Email on page expiry	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.

Colour

You can also select the colour for this status in the workflow. This colour will appear on the Confluence page byline once the workflow reaches this status. Select the colour by clicking on the icon at the top of the configuration panel.

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.