Why is this post helpful?

I have personally helped dozens of teams set up and tune-up their approval flows. Our Khoros implementation team has helped hundreds more and they agree. These are the guidelines the greatest brands in the world follow for effective approval workflows. 

Are you here for the tune-up checklist? Jump ahead clicking here: Tune-up!

1. Honest workflows work

There is a difference between ideal workflows and honest workflows. For some, the ideal flows include 2 people from brand, 2 from legal, and a test audience all approve your content before it goes live, but honest workflows balance 2 critical needs. 

1. Protect your brand through content review
2. Publish your content in a timely manner

Especially when those reviews include questions or possible changes you can see how this compounds time needed to finalize content. 

2. Minimize bottlenecks

While it’s great for the senior manager to have final approval on everything, there is a time when that person isn’t available or gets behind. 

One great way to help make your workflows honest is minimizing bottlenecks with approval teams. Think of a team called “Manager approval” so any of the 3 managers can approve. 

3. Use tasks for collaboration

When a post is good to go - hit the green approve button

If it needs to be totally scrapped - the red reject button

If it’s almost there but needs some work - hit the yellow task button. 

With tasks you can avoid sending posts all the way back through the entire approval flow* (like hitting the reject button), and you can provide very clear direction for what needs to change for approval. 

*Double check the re-approval settings of teams to see if the tasks’s change would send it back. See tune-up checklist below

Configuration Approaches to Approvals:

If you are not running everything through the same approval path (which is common for small to medium-sized teams) the rest of you are likely running approvals based on just 1 of the following dimension

Account-based approval - Account or account set rule

Example Scenario: You have multiple brands and they each have their own Instagram account. Each brand has a different brand manager that needs to approve posts.

• Brand A has a different brand manager than Brand B. 
• If you post to an account for brand A, it should go to the Brand A manager. 

Content-based approval - A label-based rule

Every post needs to go to the correct product’s legal team to review. Your team uses labels to identify which product is featured in every post.

• Product A has a different legal team than product B. 
• If a post is labeled as product A, it should go to Legal Team A
• Bonus: If a post has product A and also product B, both legal teams must approve the post! (want this scenario to kick off a totally different workflow? Check out advanced functionality & stop rules below)

Person based approvals - User role-based rule

You have a new hire, and 2 interns, that need approval from a manager. No one else needs content approved. 

• If one of those people create a post-it must be approved by a manager
• * you may want to create a custom user role “intern” to achieve a workflow like this.

Tune-up Checklist:

Review teams page 

1. Do you see people no longer with the company?
1. Remove/Replace that user from Approval the team & delete the User 
2. Do you see “Deleted User?” This means one of your approvers has been deleted from the system. 
1. Consider replacing them with the best alternative 
2. Consider deleting the team if it is no longer needed
3. Team settings
1. Does a date change require re-approval? Usually, a compliance team is not concerned about a post going on Thursday at 10 am vs Saturday at 3 pm… If a date is changed - be sure this compliance team will not need to re-approve the post! 

 

Approval Rules page for each initiative 

1. Double-check: you’ll want to review approval rules for posts (outbound marketing) and also Responses (reply from a social inbox queue or stream)
   
2. Pooled or Sequenced approvals
   1. Does your team often make edits through the approval process?
      If yes, sequenced approvals will minimize the need to re-approve changes for other teams.
   2. If no, use a pooled approach to minimize timing bottlenecks. 
3. Sequenced Approvals
   1. Double-check your order
      
4. Advanced Functionality
   1. Stop Rules: If you are explaining your approval flow and ever say “except when….” you may consider using a stop rule to create an exception to your standard approval rule logic.
   2. If you need to, you can live in the agile world of pooled approvals, until that final layer from the boss. 
   3. Mixing Sequenced and pooled

Got this far and still not sure what to do?

 I will personally answer your questions
Post questions in the comments

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