Approval workflows walkthrough: Team Admin approvers

Audience: Enterprise Scribe Admins & Creators (Hub, Grid & Global modules) This Scribe walks through how Approval Workflows work when configured for your team with the option to have Team Admins as the approvers.

Caila MacDonald
28 steps

Scribe

**Approval Workflows** can be turned on by **System Admins** for either your entire organization, or only for specific teams. [This article](https://support.scribehow.com/hc/en-us/articles/30295822152349-Approval-workflows-Controlling-what-gets-published) explains how System Admins can turn on Approval Workflows. The following guide applies when Approval Workflows has been turned on with the option of **Team Admins** selected for approval method.

Creators: New Document Creation

When you capture a new Scribe, or create a new Page, it will be set to a **Private** share setting until you take action to submit it for approval. In Scribe, **Private** documents are exclusively available to the document owner, and do not show in the All Documents view for anyone else.

You can view your **Private** documents by clicking into **All Documents** from the sidebar on the Scribe homepage, then clicking into the **Unsorted** folder under Private.

**System Admins** and **Team Admins** can still view documents set to **Private**, but only if the owner sends them a link to the document directly. *If needed, the Scribe support team can surface links to any Private documents on behalf of Admins.*

When you're ready, click the **Submit for Approval** button in the top right corner to submit your document for admin approval.

By default, all Team Admins will be selected as potential approver. You can use the **X** next to each name if you'd like to remove them from your approver list. Optionally, you can add **reviewers** to notify & share your document with, but who will not weigh in on approval of the document. When your approver list looks correct, click the **Submit** button.

Once your document is submitted for approval, you'll see the yellow banner at the top update accordingly. You can continue making edits to your document while it awaits approval.

Creators: Review Documents Pending Approval

The **Submit for Approval** button on a document pending approval will remain greyed out until the document is approved, even if changes are requested.

On documents pending approval, you can view pending approvals by clicking the **grey page icon** at the top of the page.

This will open the **Approval Requests** side bar on the right, which shows what approval is currently pending. You can click the **Edit** button to reopen the submission window and add additional approvers if needed. You can hover over each Team Admin to reveal buttons to **Send Reminder**, which will trigger another email notification to them asking for their review, or to **Cancel Request**.

To review your documents pending approval, click the **Approval Requests** tab in the sidebar, and click the **My Docs** view. Here, you can see all documents pending approval, and you can hover over the **Requested To** column to see which Team Admins you submitted to for approval as well as their current review status.

Additionally, under **All Documents**, accessed from the sidebar on the Scribe homepage, you'll also see any new documents pending approval under the **Unsorted** folder under **Private** with the **Approval Requested** flag at the top.

Note that in your All Documents view, **the last published version will remain visible until the new version is approved**, including the title of the Scribe.

When your document is approved, you'll receive an email notification. As soon as the document is approved and published, the default sharing permissions set for your organization will apply.

Team Admins: Review Submissions for Approval

As a Team Admin, you'll receive an email notification when a document is submitted to you for approval.

To review, click the **Approval Requests** tab from the lefthand sidebar, and click into **Review Requests**.

Under **Review Requests**, you can see all documents submitted to you for approval, along with which Creator and Team they're from. To review a document, click the **Review** button.

On the document, you'll see a yellow banner noting who submitted the document for approval and when.

Team Admins: Approve & Publish Documents

When you're ready to approve the document, click **Approve & Publish** in the top right corner, or the same button on the yellow banner. As always with publishing, you then have the option to resolve any outstanding comments, and to name the version if helpful to notate what changes are made within Version History.

As soon as the document is approved and published, the default sharing permissions set for your organization will apply. Approved Scribes will show a checkmark at the top of the Scribe including the name of the Team Admin who approved it, and a checkmark on the document in the All Documents view.

Team Admins: Reject & Request Changes

After reviewing the document, if you see edits that need to be made before publishing, you can **Request Changes.**

**On Scribes only,** you must leave at least one comment before requesting changes, so that the document author knows what to change. *Comments are not yet supported on Pages, so any feedback on what changes to make should be given to the Creator outside of Scribe.*

Use the speech bubble icon on at least one of the steps or the overall Scribe to leave a comment explaining what should be updated.

Creators: When Changes are Requested

When changes are requested, you'll receive an email notification letting you know that comments have been left:

You'll also see an updated icon in your **Approval Requests** tab with an orange comment icon indicating changes have been requested.

On the document itself, you'll see a blue banner at the top indicating changes have been requested. You can click **View Comments** or the grey comment icon at the top to open the **Comments** sidebar and review the feedback provided.

You can respond with a comment, or click the checkmark to resolve the comment once it's been addressed.

Once you've made the requested changes, click the **Renotify Reviewers** button to inform the Team Admin that changes have been made. This will automatically notify any reviewers who were originally submitted to. As noted earlier, be aware that the **Submit for Approval** button on a document pending approval will remain greyed out until the document is approved, even if changes are requested.

To notify only 1 single admin, you can also click the grey page icon at the top of the page to open the **Approval Requests** side bar at any time to see whether the document is pending Team Admin action, and hover to reveal an alert button to notify a single admin.

Creators: Editing an Existing Document

When editing an existing document, the same process as above will apply, and **the last published version will remain visible until the new version is approved.** Below is an example of how that appears in Scribe.

In this example, the title of the Scribe has been edited, and the new version is now going to be submitted for approval.

While the document is pending approval, **only the last published version will remain visible until the new version is approved.** In this example, that means ***the old title is displayed after leaving edit mode.*** The yellow banner at the top will be shown only to users with edit access, notifying them that changes are pending approval.

This also applies to how the document appears under **All Documents**, where **only the last published version will remain visible until the new version is approved.** Here again, the old title is displayed on the document preview, along with a yellow banner flagging **Approval Requested** that indicates changes are pending approval.

In addition to viewing your document in editing mode, which will always show your most recent edits, you can always open your **Approval Requests** tab to see what documents are pending approval, **including the most recent updates to the title.**