Add an Approval Form to an automation

An Approval form pauses an automation until someone on your team reviews what it prepared and approves or declines it. You build the form yourself: which values the reviewer sees, which ones they can correct, and what happens next for each outcome. This article explains how to add an Approval form to an automation and set it up.

Prerequisites

To add an Approval form to an automation, you need to:

• Have the role of contributor or administrator.
• Have an automation. See Create your first automation flow.
• Recommended: your team uses the SidePanel, where most approvals are reviewed. See Set up the SidePanel as an Outlook app.

Add the Approval form block

1. Open the automation and click the + where the approval should happen in the flow.
2. Under Conditions, select Approval form.

The block is added to the canvas and its settings open in the sidebar. The sidebar has these parts, from top to bottom:

• Title: the heading the reviewer sees above the form, for example "Order review". If you leave it empty, a default title is shown.
• Form: the fields the reviewer sees, edits, or confirms.
• Approval button text and Decline button text: the labels on the two decision buttons. They default to Approve and Decline, so you can rename them to something more specific, such as Send reply.
• Expires after: how many days the approval stays open.

Build the form

Click Add section and choose a field type. Each field appears as a card you can expand or collapse. Drag a card by its handle to change the order, and use the trash icon to remove it.

The available field types are:

• Short text and Long text: free text, such as a customer name or a drafted reply.
• Number: a number, with an optional Minimum value and Maximum value.
• Date: a date, shown in the Date format you pick: DD/MM/YYYY (the default), MM/DD/YYYY, or YYYY-MM-DD.
• Email: an email address.
• Single choice and Multiple choice: a list of options the reviewer picks from.
• Table: rows and columns, for example the lines of an order.
• Divider: a line that visually separates groups of fields. It has nothing to configure.
• Note: text for the reviewer to read, such as an instruction or a link. You can include values from earlier steps in it.

Field settings

Most fields share these settings:

• Field name: the label the reviewer sees. Give every field a name, otherwise the reviewer cannot tell what to enter.
• Example/Hint: placeholder text shown in an empty field, for example "e.g. ACME Corp".
• Pre-filled value: a fixed value, or a variable from an earlier step in the automation, such as a value one of your models extracted from the email. The reviewer then checks the value instead of typing it.
• Field behavior: choose one of the following.
  • Optional: the reviewer can leave the field empty.
  • Required: the reviewer must fill in the field before they can approve.
  • Read-only: the reviewer sees the value but cannot change it. Use this to show a prediction for context without letting it be edited.

Single choice and Multiple choice fields offer only Optional and Required. A Multiple choice field has no pre-filled value.

You can place two fields side by side by dragging one onto the left or right half of another. Tables, dividers, and notes always take the full width.

Choice options

For a Single choice or Multiple choice field, set Options to one of the following:

• Manual: type each option yourself. Use Add option to add more, and drag them to change the order. Give the field at least one option, otherwise the reviewer has nothing to pick from.
• Dynamic: select a list variable from an earlier step, and the options are filled in when the automation runs.

Tables

A table field has a Table name and an Options setting:

• Manual: bind Rows to a list from an earlier step, then add the columns with Add column. Each column has a name and a value, which is a variable or a fixed value. Click a column's settings icon to choose its type (short text, long text, number, date, email, single choice, or multiple choice) and whether it is optional, required, or read-only. Add at least one column, otherwise the reviewer sees an empty table.
• Dynamic: bind Rows to a list that is already formatted as a table. The columns come from the data itself, so you do not define them here.

Check User can add and remove rows if the reviewer may add or delete rows, for example to add an order line the automation missed.

Preview the form

Click Preview at the bottom of the block's sidebar to see the form the way the reviewer will see it, including your title and button labels.

Set the expiry

Expires after sets how many days the approval stays open, from 1 to 90 days. The default is 30 days. If you clear the field, it goes back to 30.

When the window closes without a decision, the approval expires and the automation continues along its expired path. The reviewer then sees the form as a read-only snapshot marked as expired, and can no longer approve or decline it. Expiry is checked every 15 minutes, so the expired path can start up to 15 minutes after the window closes.

Connect the outcome paths

An Approval form has three outcome paths on the canvas, labeled approved, declined, and expired. Click the + on each path to add the steps that should run for that outcome:

• approved: the reviewer clicked the approve button. The automation continues with the form values as the reviewer left them, including any corrections.
• declined: the reviewer clicked the decline button. Declining does not save last-minute edits or check required fields.
• expired: nobody decided before the expiry window closed.

You do not have to use every path. If an outcome has no steps after it, the automation simply stops there when that outcome happens.

Test and publish

Click Test to try the automation on a message. When the test run reaches the Approval form, the approval card appears in the run, where you can approve or decline it to follow each path. In a test run you can also click Expire to try the expired path without waiting for the window to close.

When you are happy with the result, publish the automation. From then on, every run that reaches the Approval form pauses and waits for a reviewer.

Where reviewers approve

Pending approvals appear in two places:

• The SidePanel: the approval appears next to the email, case, or ticket it belongs to, so your team can review it without leaving the tool they work in. See Use the Approval Form in the SidePanel for the reviewer's guide.
• The Messages page in Tekst: open the conversation and go to the Automations tab, where the approval appears as a card. See See automations and approvals on a conversation.

Approve stays unavailable until every required field is filled in and every value is valid, for example a number within your minimum and maximum. Decline is always available.

Replacing an older approval step

Automations built before the Approval form was introduced may still contain the older approval step. The editor marks it with This block type is no longer supported, and a run that reaches it fails. To fix this, add an Approval form in its place, rebuild the form and its paths, then delete the old step and publish the automation again.