Setting Up Approval Workflows

In many marketing teams, approval processes are essential for reviewing and editing social media posts and messages before publication.

With Click Social, you can easily set up single or multi-step approval processes, known as workflows, based on your requirements, helping team members collaborate, review, and approve social media content with ease.

Setting Up Workflows

To set up a workflow, go to Settings > Compliance > Workflows, click on New Workflow, enter a name and click Save.

Then, define the steps that each item must go through before it is approved.

Each workflow can include one or more steps, with each step requiring one or more approvers. You can define as many steps as you need. In each step, you can define if you want all users to approve items or any user.

• Any user can approve: The item will advance to the next step once any user approves it.
• All users have to approve: The item will advance to the next step once all users approve it.

How the Approval Process Works

As soon as you finish setting up the steps, users will be able to send items to your workflow directly from the post and message consoles by clicking on Send to Approval.

If you have more than one workflow, users will need to select which workflow they want to send the item to. You can limit the selection by adding workflows to your team's setup.

When you send a post or message to approval, all users in the first step of the workflow will receive a notification asking them to review and approve the item. Once they approve, depending on the step definitions, the item will either advance to the next step or another notification will be sent for the other users in the step to approve. If there are no more steps to advance to, the item will automatically be approved.

Approval Action Buttons for Approvers:

1. Approve: Clicking "Approve" moves the item forward in the approval workflow. If additional steps remain, it will proceed to the next step; otherwise, it will exit the approval process.
    
2. Request Revision: Clicking "Request Revision" sends the item back to the contributor for changes, bypassing any previous steps if they exist.
    
3. Edit: Allows you to edit the content of the approval request.
    
4. Publish Date: Lets you update only the publish date of the approval request.
    
5. Delete: Removes the item from the platform.

Contributors will only see the button 'Retrieve' if the item is status "In Approval" or "Expired". To make changes, they must retrieve the item, which converts it to a draft and removes it from the approval process. After editing, the item can be resubmitted.

Managing the Approval Queue

From the Approvals tab in Click Social, you will be able to see posts and messages pending your approval. The default order they appear in is based on the last edited date/time.

Each item in the tab has an Approval Status that defines the actions you can take. Here are the relevant statutes and what they mean:

Note: Only users listed as approvers in a workflow step can edit or delete posts in approval. Admin role alone does not override this restriction. The original author can retrieve the post from approval to regain edit/delete access.

1. In Approval: By default, all items sent to approval are In Approval. Once an item is in this status, only the approvers inside the current workflow step will be able to edit, approve, or request a revision for it. Others users (including admins) will be able to view the item but will not be able to take action.
    
2. Revision Requested: At any time during the approval process, an approver can request a revision. When a revision is requested, the item bounces back to the user who sent the item for approval.
   
   The user who requests the revision is required to leave a note, stating the changes that they want. The user(s) who receives the rejection will see the note and be required to take action before sending the item back to approval. 
    
3. Expired: This status applies only to messages on the advocacy board and posts. If the items' publish date has passed while in approval, it will become expired in one hour from the publish date.
   
   If an item is approved within one hour of its publish date, it will be published immediately.
   
   Once items expire, you will need to update the publish date before approving. Expired items will stay expired for 24 hours before automatically reverting into drafts.

Approvals Views

There are 3 views in the approvals module:

1. My Approvals: As an approver, in this view you can view posts and messages awaiting your approval. These items are displayed in order of their last submission date/time, with statuses such as "In Approval" or "Expired". Once approved, the item will either proceed to the next workflow step or exit the approval process if there are no further steps. Items with the status "Revision Requested" will appear in the "All Approvals" view, which shows approval requests for the team or account.
    
2. In Approval and Needs Revision: View "In Approval" helps contributors to track items with the statuses "In Approval" or "Expired" they've submitted for approval. When an item is marked "Revision Requested", it will appear in the "Needs Revision" view, allowing contributors to make necessary changes.
    
3. All Approvals: This view is available to all users and lists all approval requests across the team or account with status "In Approval", "Expired", or "Revision Requested". Admins and Owners have access to all account approvals in this tab.

Enforcing the Use of Workflows

Any user who has access to a workflow can send items to approval. To make sure that a user cannot create posts and messages without approval, you will need to assign that user a role that doesn't have the option to approve posts or messages, depending on your preference. Users without the approval permission will be able to save items only to draft or send them to approve.

Linking Workflows to Teams and Setting Permissions

If you're using Click Social's Teams feature, you'll need to assign any created workflow to its relevant Team(s) to ensure that team members can see and use it when creating a Message or Post.

Additionally, approvers must belong to the team that submitted the content for review and have 'Delete' and 'Update' role permissions for the relevant item types (e.g. posts, messages, advocacy messages, and stories)

You can manage this by going to your account's Settings > User Management > Teams menu, where you'll find the option to assign Workflows to each Team.

Activating Approvals in your Advocacy Board

In your advocacy board, you can activate and use approval workflows for any posts that advocates edit.

When an advocate customizes a post, either manually or using the AI Assist feature, you can require approval before it is published to social media.

To activate Workflows for your board, click the Advocacy icon in the left sidebar, select your board, then navigate to Settings > Approvals.

From there, toggle Approvals on and select the Workflow you want to use.

Once activated, any edited posts will be routed to your Approvals queue for review.