Design the approval route

What this achieves

The designer is where you draw the path a request takes, as a diagram of steps joined by lines. This page covers laying out that diagram; configuring what each step does is covered by the pages that follow.

Required role: Administrator.

Before you start

The designer needs a screen at least 768 pixels wide. On anything narrower it asks you to switch to a tablet, laptop, or desktop, or to rotate the device, rather than showing a canvas that does not fit.

Steps

Go to Approvals → Workflows and open the workflow.
Select Open Designer.
Drag a step from the Nodes panel onto the canvas. On a touch screen, tap it instead and it is added at the centre of the view.
Join the steps by dragging from one step’s connection point to the next. Each line is the path a request takes.
Select a step. Its properties open on the right.
On Common, give it a Step Name that means something to the person who will see it in their inbox.
On Config, set what the step does.
Select Save.
Select Validate and fix anything it reports.

The steps you can add

Option	Description
Start	Where a request enters the route.
End	Where the route finishes.
Approval	A person is asked to decide.
Auto-Approval	The request passes without a person when your rules match.
Condition	The route branches on the request’s own values.
Notify	Someone is told, without being asked to decide.
Parallel Split	Fans the route out so several branches run at once.
Parallel Join	Merges parallel branches back into one path.

Example: HC Corp’s promotion route is a start, a condition on grade, two approval steps, a notify step for the People team, and an end. Six steps, drawn once.

Naming steps

The step name is not decoration. It appears at the top of the task in the approver’s inbox and in every report about where requests stall.

Example: Head of Department approval tells Daniel Okonkwo what he is being asked for. Approval 2 does not.

The canvas controls

Option	Description
Undo / Redo	Step back and forward through your edits.
Zoom In / Zoom Out / Fit View	Move around a large route. Fit View brings the whole diagram back into view.
Lock / Unlock	Locks the canvas so steps cannot be dragged by accident while you read it.
Validate	Checks the route and lists what would stop it publishing.
Export JSON / Import JSON	Takes a copy of the route out, or brings one in.
Simulate	Runs the route against sample data without writing anything.

A badge on the toolbar shows whether your work is Saved, Saving, or Unsaved. Save before you leave the screen.

Two people cannot edit one version

A draft version is held by whoever opened it. If someone else already has it open, the designer opens for you as view only and says the version is being edited by another administrator.

Wait rather than working around it. Duplicating the workflow to get an editable copy leaves you with two routes and a merge to do by hand.

A published version cannot be edited

Opening a published version in the designer gives you a read-only canvas. This is deliberate: what a published version says is what running requests are following.

To change a published route, create a new version, edit that, and publish it. See Publish and version a workflow.

What happens next

A saved draft is still only a drawing. Validation tells you whether it could run, simulation shows you the path it would take, and publishing is what makes it the version new requests follow.