Elium

Workflows

Approval

Space administrators and coordinators check an article before it is published.

Concept

Approval lets the people responsible for a space check content before it is published. It also works for updates to existing content.

Glossary

A few key words, so we all mean the same thing:

Approval

The act of approving content. For an original article, approving and publishing are two separate actions. For a reshare waiting for approval, approval publishes it automatically.

Approval process

Everything from the approval request until the content is published.

Approval request

A request from a contributor to have content approved, either because the space requires it or because the contributor asks for it.

Approver

A person who can approve content, either as an administrator or coordinator of a space where approval is mandatory, or because a contributor asked them.

Contributor

The person who sends the approval request.

In practice

There are two ways content goes through approval:

  1. A contributor asks someone to review their content before it is published or updated.

  2. The content is published in a space where approval is mandatory.

Approval path

A request has one of three statuses:

  1. Waiting for approval: the request has just been sent. The approver is in control: they can approve the content, or click "Request corrections" if it cannot be published as it is.

  2. Waiting for correction: the contributor is in control. The approver asks for changes, with a global message or with annotations. When the changes are done, the contributor sends the request again and it goes back to "Waiting for approval".

  3. Approved: the final status. For an original article, the approver and the contributor can both publish the content at any time. If the contributor changes it before it is published, it goes back to the first step. A reshare is published automatically when it is approved.

At each step, the approver and the contributor can leave messages for each other. There can be as many rounds between the first two steps as needed.

Mandatory approval in a space

You can make every new article and every update in a space go through approval:

  1. Open the space and click the three dots next to "Joined", then "Approvals".

  2. Activate "This space requires approval to post articles".

Two sections then appear:

  • Approvers: the approvers of the space are its administrators and coordinators. To change them, change the roles of the space members.

  • In progress approvals: the articles of the space that are in the approval process. Use "Filter" to narrow the list.

From then on, contributors must request approval before their content is published: in the editor, the option to publish is replaced by an option to request approval.

Approvers find the requests in "Tasks", in the "Approval" tab. The number next to "Tasks" in the main menu includes these requests, together with your other tasks: expired articles, annotations on your articles and articles handed over to you.

In this tab, approvers see:

  1. the articles that are assigned to them

  2. the articles that have no approver yet but wait for publication in a space they are responsible for

The pool principle

This second group is a key principle of approval. When someone requests publication in a space where approval is mandatory, the content goes into a shared pool. No approver is assigned yet, but all the approvers of the space see it in their list.

Approvers choose the articles they review from the pool. An email about a new request does not assign the article to anyone.

This has several advantages:

  1. Approvers know their field, so they know which content they can approve.

  2. If an approver is away, the other approvers see all the requests and can take over.

  3. Contributors cannot pick their favourite approver.

Approving reshares

A contributor who reshares an article into a space with mandatory approval starts the usual approval process. The reshare stays unpublished in the target space until it is approved. The original article stays published in its own space.

The administrators and coordinators of the target space handle the reshare in the usual approval list, in "Tasks" > "Approval" or in the space settings. Platform administrator rights are not needed. Approving the reshare publishes it automatically. To refuse it and ask for changes, use "Request corrections". The corrections must be made in the original article.

Each new published version of the original article needs a new approval in the target space. The last published version of the reshare stays visible until the new version is approved. If an approval is already in progress, it restarts with the latest version, even when corrections were requested. See Reshare for the steps and the editing rules.

Users who can publish directly in the target space can still reshare there without a first approval step. Later versions of these reshares need approval too.

Approval on request

Contributors can also ask other people to review their content before it is published, even when approval is not mandatory.

The most common case: someone notices an error in an article they do not own. They correct it and send the correction to the owner for approval. The owner then decides whether to publish it. Another case is content that a manager must check before it is published.

  1. Edit the article and make your changes.

  2. Click "Save", then "Request approval".

  3. Choose one or more approvers. If you choose several, they approve the article one after the other, in the order of the list.

  4. If you want, write a message, for example to explain what to check. Then click "Request approval".

You do not need to be an approver of the space to be asked for an approval on request.

Review a request

  1. Open the request from "Tasks" > "Approval", or from the link in the notification.

  2. The article opens with the "Approval" panel on the right. It shows the status, the current approver and the messages.

  3. Read the article. To comment, write a global message at the bottom of the panel, or add annotations in the text.

  4. Click "Approve", or "Request corrections" if the content needs changes.

When an original article is approved, open it and click "Publish" to publish it with the update option you want.

Email notifications for approval requests

When an article is submitted for approval without a named approver in a space with mandatory approval, Elium emails the space's coordinators and administrators.

In a space without mandatory approval, Elium does not send this email.

Recipients must have access to the article. The requester and the person submitting the request do not receive this email. If an approver is named, the existing notification goes to that person instead.

The email links to the version submitted for approval. Open it to review the article. The request also remains available in "Tasks" > "Approval".

You can disable approval notifications in your personal notification settings. If you have not set a personal preference, the platform's default applies.

Analytics

Approval can be followed at four levels: platform, space, content and contributor.

At the platform level

System administrators have an overview of the approval process: click your profile picture in the top right corner, then "Settings". In the menu on the left, open "Content management" and click "Approval".

The page has three parts:

  • Counters for the whole platform: the number of spaces with mandatory approval, of content waiting for approval, of content waiting for correction, of content approved but not yet published, and of content approved and published.

  • Spaces with mandatory approval, with their approvers. This helps you spot a space where nobody can approve content (a space without administrator or coordinator). "Manage approvers" opens the approval settings of the space.

  • Approvals by space: the same counters for each space. Use it to notice requests that pile up, for example when an approver is away.

At the space level

The administrators and coordinators of a space see the content in the approval process in the space settings, under "Approval", in the "In progress approvals" section. Content stays in the approval process until it is published.

At the content level

The approver is shown in the panel on the right of the article, under "Approvers", after the content owner and the contributors.

Each version that was approved also shows who approved it in the version history. You can follow the approvals version by version.

At the contributor level

Contributors follow their own requests in "My Contents", in the "Waiting for approval" tab.