This guide covers how to review requests assigned to you, make approval decisions, and communicate with other participants through comments.
Receiving notifications
Ensure that you have enabled notifications for requests within your profile. When a request reaches your step in the approval flow, you’ll receive a notification by email and Slack (if applicable). The notification will include:
The name of the person who submitted the request
The request type (e.g., Salary Increase, Equipment Issue)
The person the request is for, if different from the requestor
Which step you're reviewing
Click the link in the notification to go directly to the request detail page.
You can also find requests awaiting your review on the Requests page in the main navigation.
Reviewing a request
The request detail page shows everything you need to make a decision:
Request for: overview of the person the request is for, their job title, team, department, location, and reporting line.
Details: displays submitted form responses. If the request involves changes to profile data, such as a new salary or job title, both the current and proposed values are shown.
Approvals: a visual timeline of all approval steps, showing who needs to approve at each step, how many approvals are required, and the status of each decision.
Activity: a chronological timeline of all events on the request, including status changes, approval decisions, and comments.
The sidebar displays the requestor, assignee (if applicable), creation date, and current status.
Approving a request
To approve a request assigned to you:
Open the request from the notification or the Requests page.
Review the submitted details.
Click Approve.
The approval is recorded immediately. What happens next depends on the approval flow:
If more approval steps remain, the request stays in Requested status and advances to the next step. The next set of approvers are notified.
If your approval was the final step, the request moves forward based on the after-approval action configured by the admin. The request may be marked as completed, assigned to someone for fulfilment, or trigger a workflow.
Declining a request
If the request doesn't meet the criteria or shouldn't proceed:
Open the request.
Click Decline.
In the confirmation dialog, optionally add a comment to explain your decision.
Click Yes, decline.
Declining a request ends the approval flow entirely. The request status changes to Declined, and any remaining approval steps are skipped. The person who submitted the request is notified.
Adding a comment when declining is optional but recommended because it gives the requestor context on why the request wasn't approved.
Understanding the approvals timeline
The Approvals section shows every step in the approval flow as a visual timeline. For each step, you can see:
The assigned approvers: listed by name, team, or role (e.g., Manager, Manager's manager).
Decision status: a checkmark for approved, an X for declined, or no indicator if a decision is still pending.
Profile data sync successful: displayed as Request data was successfully synced to profile.
All steps are visible, including ones before and after yours. Steps that haven't been reached yet appear as pending.
Viewing and commenting
Comments appear in the Activity section alongside other events such as approval decisions, status changes, and assignments. This gives everyone involved a single timeline of what's happened on the request.
Visibility of view comments
All comments on a request are visible to every participant. This includes the person who submitted the request, all approvers (current and previous steps), and anyone assigned to complete it. When someone leaves a comment, it appears in the activity timeline with their name, profile photo, and a timestamp.
Leaving a comment
Scroll to the bottom of the request detail page.
Click the comment field where it says Leave a comment.
Type your message.
Click the submit button to send.
You can leave comments before or after making your approval decision. Comments are useful for asking the requestor for clarification, providing context to other approvers, or explaining your decision.
Currently, it’s not possible to tag specific people in comments.
Receiving a request task
You can only see a request once it reaches your step in the approval flow. If you're assigned to step 2, for example, the request won't appear on your Requests page or in My tasks until step 1 is complete.
Once you have access, you can see the full request details, including form responses, all approval steps and decisions, and the complete activity timeline with comments.
Multi-step approvals
Some request types have multiple approval steps that must be completed in sequence. Here's how that works from your perspective:
Some request types have multiple approval steps that must be completed in sequence. Here's how that works from your perspective:
You're notified when the request reaches your step.
You can see all previous steps and their decisions when reviewing.
After you approve, the request advances to the next step (if one exists) or proceeds to the after-approval action.
If another approver in your step approves before you and the minimum approval count is met, your review may no longer be needed. It's marked as no longer required and the request moves on. This can be seen in the image below where out of the People Operations team, Ann, and Flora, the latter approved which was sufficient to move to the next step.
If an approver at any step declines the request, the entire request is declined regardless of how many steps remain.
Profile data syncing
If a request includes changes to profile fields, the new data syncs automatically with the employee's profile once the approval flow is complete.
Note: We don’t recommend manually adding data to the employee profile if the request form uses profile fields. The data will update automatically once the approval process is complete.
Completing an assigned request
After all approval steps pass, some requests are assigned to a person or team for fulfilment rather than being completed automatically. If a request is assigned to you:
Open the request in Requests or My tasks. The status of the review will be In progress.
Carry out the work described in the request.
Click Mark as completed.
The request status changes to Completed and the person who submitted it is notified.
If you mark a request as completed by mistake, click Reopen to return it to In progress.