Set up Approval Workflows

Approval Workflows formalize your content review process, ensuring that any content you create receives the necessary approvals before publication. An approval workflow is a template that you can save and reuse each time you need to send content for approval. You can set special rules, such as auto-scheduling a social media post after it's approved or moving automatically from one person to the next for revisions or approvals. 

In this article, we'll take you through the process of setting up approval workflows to ensure a seamless and well-structured content review process for your team and clients. 

In this article

• Creating a new approval workflow
• Edit existing approval workflows
• Implementing your workflow

Creating a new approval workflow 

Keep in mind only account owners and administrators can create approval workflows. Check out the following steps to get started:

1. Head to your Workspace Settings and select Approval workflows. 

2. Next, click on the +New Approval Workflow button. Write a workflow name that helps you and your team identify different approval processes easily. No one but you and your internal team can see the workflow name. 

3. Click on Add people to this round and select the team members or stakeholders who need to be part of the approval process. 

4. Rounds are the steps that your content needs to go through for approval. Click on Add Another Round to add more steps. You can tailor rounds to include departments such as Legal and Social Media or simply include sequential steps such as one round for internal stakeholders and another one for external clients. 

Round Preferences

Here are the ways you can customize each round:

• Everyone must approve / Any single person can approve this round - When the option is everyone must approve, every person in that round must approve. When the setting anyone can approve is on, as soon as one approver gives the okay, the round is marked approved.
• Auto-advances to next round after approved / Must manually advance to next round after approved - When auto-advance is on, Gain will automatically notify the next set of approvers as soon as a round is approved. When this option is off, the content goes into ready for next round status, and it’s up to your team to continue the approval process by sending it to the next round manually.
• Auto-schedules after approved / Must manually schedule after approved - When auto-schedule is on, Gain automatically schedules content (assuming you've set a future publishing date for it) once everyone in a round or approval workflow approves. When the auto-schedule option is off, it is up to you to schedule the content manually.

Edit existing approval workflows

You can delete, duplicate, and edit existing approval workflows from the Approval Workflows page under Workspace Settings. Find your approval workflow and click the three dots to see the options.

Once you've saved the changes made to the approval workflow, remember to update any content that's currently going through this process. If you've added new people or taken someone out, you'll need to send the content for approval again using the updated workflow. 

Implementing your workflow

Before going live, it's a great practice to test your approval workflow. Create a mock content piece and run it through the workflow to identify any issues. 

A few other things to keep in mind: 

• Set up how you would like to get notified and when. Gain's notification system ensures that stakeholders are informed of content pending their approval or when change requests are needed. 
• Track where each content piece is in the approval process to manage deadlines effectively and identify potential delays. 
• Keep in mind Gain sends notifications to the people in the first round and will only notify the next round after people in a previous round have approved.