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Route a marketing file through brand and legal review

This guide walks you through one file's journey in Gain, from upload to final sign-off.

In the example, Amarillo Cafe's marketing team has designed a new autumn menu. Before it goes to print, the brand team checks the design and the legal team checks the prices and allergen information. You can follow the same steps for any file that needs more than one approval, such as a campaign deck, a brochure, a poster or a video. Design files work too: when you upload a Photoshop (PSD) or Illustrator (AI) file, Gain converts it to a PDF so reviewers can view and annotate it.

Jump ahead

Before you start

You'll need:

  • A workspace for the brand or campaign. Amarillo Cafe uses a workspace called Amarillo Cafe. Learn about workspaces
  • Your reviewers invited to that workspace. In this example, the brand manager and the legal reviewer both have the Client role, because they review and approve content but don't create it. Learn about user roles

You don't need to connect any social channels to approve files.

1. Upload the file

  1. In your workspace, click + New content, then Upload/Import, and choose the file. In the example, that's Amarillo Cafe autumn menu.pdf. You can also drag and drop files onto the Gallery view, up to 25 at a time.
  2. Choose the folder to save it in, for example Print or Menus.
  3. Add a publish date, such as the date the menu goes to print. Your Clients or stakeholders only see items with a publish date on their calendar. Without one, they'll still find the file in their approval queue.
  4. Add a description with anything reviewers should know. For example: "Autumn menu, final layout. Brand: check fonts and colors. Legal: check prices and allergen symbols." Team Members and Clients or stakeholders can both read it.
Uploading a file

👉🏼 Learn more about uploading and organizing files

2. Set up a two-round approval workflow

An approval workflow sends your content to the right people in the right order. You set it up once and reuse it every time. For this file, brand reviews first and legal reviews second.

  1. Open Workspace Settings (⚙️) and click Approval Workflows.
  2. Click +New approval workflow. Name it, for example Print review, and name the first round Brand.
  3. Click Add a person and choose the brand manager.
  4. Click + Add another round, name it Legal, and add the legal reviewer.
  5. For each round, choose:
    • Everyone must approve or Any single person can approve, if there's more than one person in the round.
    • Auto-advance: turn it on so the file moves to the Legal round as soon as Brand approves.
  6. Click Save.
Creating an approval workflow

Reviewers in the Legal round won't see the file until Brand has approved it.

👉🏼 See the full guide to approval workflows

3. Send the file for approval

  1. Open the file or select it in the Gallery or Calendar and click To Approval.
Selecting the file and sending for approval in the Gallery
Sending for approval with the file open
  1. Choose the Print review workflow. Add a note if you like. It appears in the reviewers' email and in the Activity tracker.
Choosing an approval workflow

The file's status changes from Draft to Pending Approval, and the brand manager gets an email with a link straight to their approval queue.

👉🏼 Learn more about sending content for approval

4. Brand reviews and annotates the file

The autumn menu appears in the brand manager's approval queue, along with anything else waiting for their approval. They click View details to open the whole file. Annotations can only be added here, not in the queue. They spot two problems: the heading font is wrong, and the colors are off-brand.

  1. They click Request Changes.
Seeing the item in the approval queue and clicking on Request changes
  1. They click Add Annotations and drag over the heading to mark it, then write: "Use our logo font here."
Clicking on the annotations icon in the comment field
Choosing an area of the file and adding an annotation in the comment field
  1. They click Add Another Comment, mark the photo, and write: "The background should be light and the font in dark color."
Choosing a second area of the file to add a second annotation
  1. They click Request Changes to send their feedback.

Each annotation is pinned to the exact spot on the file, so there's no guessing which part of the file they mean. The file's status changes to Revision Requested, and the Team Member who sent it for approval is notified by email and in Gain (🔔).

👉🏼 Share the Quick guide for Clients or stakeholders with your reviewers

5. Revise the file and send it back

  1. Open the file and go to Activity to read the feedback. Click an annotation's number to jump to the part of the file it refers to.
The feedback appears in the Activity tab, next to the file.
  1. If something isn't clear, click Ask a question about this feedback in Activity. This opens the Approval tab with a comment field. Type your question there, and it's sent to the reviewer. The file goes back to them until they answer.
  2. Make the changes in your design tool. Then open the file in Gain to update it. In the Creative section, under File, click Upload New Version, choose the updated file and click Save.
Open the content editor and click on Upload new version.
  1. Click Resend to Approval (it replaces To Approval while the status is Revision Requested) to send the updated menu back to the brand manager.
Click Resend to Approval to send it back to the reviewer who requested changes.

When you annotate a file, Gain keeps its version history. Anyone reviewing the file can click the numbers below earlier comments in the Activity to open a previous version with its annotations, then click Latest Version to return to the current one.

Click on an annotation's number to see the previous version where it was made. Go back to the newest version by clicking on Latest version at the bottom.

When the brand manager approves the new version, auto-advance moves the file straight to the Legal round, and the legal reviewer gets their email.

They review the prices and allergen symbols and either:

  • click Approve (or Approve with a comment), or
  • request changes (with or without annotations), just like brand did. You then revise and renotify, as in step 5.

Once legal approves, the file's status changes to Approved.

The Approval tab on the right shows the file's approval history. Expand each reviewer's activity to see their comments.

7. Keep a record of the approval

Everything that happened to the file is saved on the item:

  • Activity tracker: a time-stamped history of every comment, annotation, change request and approval, with names.
  • Approval tracker: each round, who approved and when.
  • Version history: If you made annotations, you can see the earlier version(s) of the file.

When the file is final, you can mark it as Live to stop anyone editing it further. If you need to share the record outside Gain, for example with your compliance team, export the file and choose Excel (includes activity) as the export format. The Excel file includes an Activity sheet with every comment, approval and revision, with names and timestamps. A CSV export only includes the file's details and current status, not its approval history.

👉🏼 Learn more about tracking content activity


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