Understanding Workflow Approvals

Learn how the approval system works in Spojit.

Overview

Approvals are human-in-the-loop checkpoints that pause a workflow until a designated person reviews and decides whether it should continue. They give you a controlled break between automated steps so a person can sign off before the workflow does something irreversible, expensive, or sensitive.

An approval is created when a running workflow reaches a Human node on the canvas. The execution pauses, the approval appears in the Approvals page for the configured approvers, and the workflow resumes on approve, fails on reject, and fails on timeout. The decision is recorded in the approval history alongside the execution log.

When to Use Approvals

Before processing large financial transactions or refunds.
Before sending bulk emails, notifications, or outbound messages.
Before making changes to production systems or customer-facing data.
At any step that needs human judgment the workflow cannot make on its own.

How It Works

A workflow execution reaches a Human node and the execution pauses.
Spojit creates a pending approval and notifies the configured approvers in-app, and by email if the node has email notifications enabled.
The approval appears in Approvals -> Pending for every approver who can act on it.
An approver opens the request, reviews the context, and clicks Approve or Reject.
The workflow resumes on approve, fails with a rejection reason on reject, and fails with a timeout error if no decision is made before the configured timeout.

Key Concepts

Approver - A workspace member allowed to act on the request. Any one named approver can resolve a slot.
Urgency - A sort hint (low, normal, high) used to order the Pending list.
Timeout - The number of minutes the workflow will wait before the approval expires and the execution fails.
Workspace approval setting - A workspace-wide Require Workflow Approval toggle in Settings -> General that gates workflow changes (separate from per-node Human approvals).

Tips

Write the approver message so it stands on its own. The approver may not have built the workflow.
Use urgency to keep the Pending queue meaningful. If everything is high, nothing is.
Place approvals before the expensive or irreversible step, not after it.
For repeated patterns (e.g. every refund over $500), bundle the approval into a Subworkflow so every caller picks up the same Human node configuration.

Common Pitfalls

Setting a timeout shorter than the approver's typical response window. Executions that time out are marked failed.
Naming a single user as the only approver. If they are away, the workflow fails. Name two or more approvers so any one of them can resolve the request.
Forgetting that a rejected approval ends the execution. Downstream steps do not run.
Adding approvals to high-frequency, low-risk workflows. The queue fills up and approvers stop paying attention.