Creating an approval project in Plan

An approval project is where material is sent for review and signed off. This article shows how to create one.

Find where your projects live

Open Plan from the product switcher in the top left corner, then choose Approval projects.

The left panel groups projects by the kind of material they hold: Place approvals for assets from your Place library, Produce approvals for material built from a Produce template, and Document approvals. Each group is split into a Central hierarchy and a Local hierarchy. Which groups you see depends on how your portal is set up.

Open the group you want the project to sit in. The new project is created in that group.

Create the project

1. Click Create new in the top right corner.
2. Give the project a name.
3. For a Place approvals project, choose the Place archive it works with under Archive in Place. You can pick more than one. If the archive is already used by another project, Plan says so underneath.
4. Turn on any settings you need. They are explained below and you can change them later.
5. Click Create project.

The project appears in the left panel straight away. There is no draft step and nothing to activate.

What the settings do

Advanced deadline settings sets the time allowed for approver responses. Turn it on and set a Response time in days and hours. Two options appear with it: Restart countdown with new version and Working time only.

Relaxed approval workflow lets Initiators change material while it is still Needs change or Pending review, and lets Approvers reopen a review that has already reached Approved or Rejected.

Download during review allows downloading of submitted material during the review process.

Choose who can use the project

As soon as the project exists, Plan asks who can upload and review material in it. Choose Select collaborators now, or Select collaborators later and come back to it from the project menu at any time.

Collaborators settings has two tabs.

On Initiators you decide what the people who put material into the project can do. All Initiators can post new assets to the project and update their own work. Two settings extend that: Initiators can review their own materials and Initiators can edit materials of others.

On Approvers you set up the review itself. Choose Single review or Multi-stage review, pick what is being approved under Subjects of approval (Visual + EXIF, Metadata, or both), then add the users and user groups who approve. Two settings change how the review runs: Everyone has to approve and Let Initiator select from Approvers.

Click Save when you are done. The project is then ready for material.

Produce approval projects

A Produce project is created the same way, with fewer settings: a name, Advanced deadline settings and Relaxed approval workflow. There is no Archive in Place, because a Produce project is not tied to a Place archive.

What to do next

Add material to the project. See Uploading an asset for approval.

If you need another project with the same setup, copy this one instead of building it again. See Duplicating an approval project.