Approving and rejecting material in an approval project

When material is sent for approval, it waits in the project until an approver decides what happens to it. This article covers the decision itself: approving, rejecting, and what each one does to the material afterwards.

If the material needs work rather than a yes or no, use Sending material back to the initiator for changes instead.

Before you start

You need to be an approver on the project. If you are not, the status control is greyed out and you can still open the material, view it and comment, but not change its status.

Being the person who uploaded the material is not enough on its own. Even with the project setting Initiators can review their own materials turned on, Plan still requires you to hold the approver privilege before you can approve your own upload.

Open the material

1. Open Plan and go to Approval projects.
2. In the left panel, click the project the material belongs to.
3. In the list, click the row of the item you want to review.

The review page opens. The preview sits in the middle, the Comments panel on the right, and a strip of thumbnails runs down the left so you can move between the items in the project without going back to the list.

Along the top you see the version, the current status, the subjects being reviewed, who requested the review and when, and a clock counting down to the deadline.

Approve the material

1. Click the status control in the top right, where it reads Pending review.
2. Choose Approve document.
3. Read the confirmation and click Confirm.

The confirmation warns you that the status can't be changed after approval. Approval is final, so make sure you are done commenting before you confirm.

After you confirm, the status turns green and reads Approved, the deadline clock changes to how long the review took, and the status control is locked.

Reject the material

Rejecting ends the review without the material being used. It is not the same as asking for changes: a rejected item cannot be revived with a new version.

1. Leave a comment explaining why. Plan will not let you reject without one.
2. Click the status control and choose Reject document.
3. Read the confirmation and click Confirm.

The confirmation asks whether you are sure, and tells you this cannot be undone. Afterwards the status turns red and reads Rejected, and the status control is locked in the same way as after approval.

Where approved material goes

Material under review sits in the Place archive from the moment it is uploaded, but only the person who uploaded it can see it there. While the review is open it carries the status Pending Review.

Once it is approved, its status in Place becomes Ready and everyone with access to that folder can see it and use it. This is what keeps unapproved material out of other people's hands without you having to manage a separate holding area.

Note that the status is called Ready in Place, not Approved. Approved is the Plan status; Ready is what Place shows once the approval has cleared.

Check what happened to an item

In the project list, click the three dots at the end of a row and choose Activity. Plan lists every step in order, with the version it applied to, who did it and when: new reviews requested, comments, change requests, approvals and rejections.

If the project uses the relaxed approval workflow

With the relaxed workflow, the confirmations drop the warning about finality, because the decision is no longer permanent. A finished review can be reopened with Restore review, which creates a new version of the file and starts the approval process again from the beginning.