Manage Approvals

This article will provide you with a basic overview of approvals and how to manage them. This includes how to send reminders, add an approver, and reassign an existing approver.

Approvals Overview

Approvers are responsible for reviewing and approving contracts. In the Review section, you'll find a list of approvers, with their roles indicated beneath their names.

Although a workflow admin configures the default approvers for your workflow at the Workflow Designer level, you can modify existing approvers and add new ones.

Clause Approvers

If you integrate AI Playbooks into your workflow, clause approvers may display in your Approvals list. When you assign specific people to review clauses, they are listed under Approvals. This includes ad-hoc approvals and clause approver configurations at the Playbook position level. Similar to pre-configured workflow approvers, you can modify the approver and send reminders. You cannot reassign clause approvals right now. To view the specific clause assigned to the approver, click Go to Clause.

Send a Reminder

1. Click on a workflow. A summary window displays on the right.

2. In the summary window, click Open overview page indicated by a two arrows icon.

3. In the Review section, locate the person you want to remind and in that same row, click *the three stacked dots > Resend email. Ironclad sends them an email reminding them to review the document.

   NOTE We don't currently support automated reminders for approvals.

   

Reassign an Existing Approver

Once you submit a workflow’s launch form, you can change which user is assigned to review and approve the document.

1. In the workflow’s Review section, locate the list of approvers. Click the three stacked dots located next to the approver you want to reassign.
2. Click Edit Approver.
3. If applicable, name the approver's Role.
4. Select a user from the Assigned To dropdown. If the Approval step is configured to be limited to a specific group, then the approval can only be reassigned to other members of that group. To learn more, refer to Build Conditional Role Assignments.
5. If needed, add Instructions, and then click Save.

Add a New Approver

You can add approvers and reviewers as contract negotiations progress. All participants in a workflow can add a new approver.

When you add a new approver, it is tracked in the Activity Feed. The new approver is notified their approval is required. New approvers are always listed under "Review at any time", and they cannot be sequenced. If a workflow returns to the Review step after the Sign or Archive steps, the approver must be added again manually.

If you add a user as an approver that is not a participant in the workflow, they are given access to the workflow. This cannot be undone.

1. In the workflow’s Review section, locate the list of approvers. Click Add Approver.
2. Name the approver's Role.
3. Select a user from the Assigned to dropdown. This dropdown includes all members of your company that are users Ironclad.
4. If needed, add Instructions, and then click Add.
5. If you no longer need an approver, click the three stacked dots next to their name, and then click Change to Participant. This removes the required approval, but keeps the user as a participant in the workflow.

Change an Existing Approver to a Participant

If you add a user as an approver that is not a participant in the workflow, they are given access to the workflow. This cannot be undone. You can, however, change their role from an active approver to a workflow participant. This is only available for ad-hoc approvers.

1. In the workflow’s Review section, locate the list of approvers. Click the three stacked dots located next to the ad-hoc approver you want to remove as an approver.
2. Click Remove Approver.
3. In the Comment field, add a reason as to why you’re removing them. This comment will be added to the Activity Feed.
4. Click Remove approver. This removes the required approval, but keeps the user as a participant in the workflow.

Show Approval Reasons

You can configure your workflows to always show the auto-generated approver reasons under each approver's name during the Review step. This is generated based on the workflow configuration's conditions that triggered each approval role.

To enable this, navigate to Company Settings > Settings and toggle on Show reasons an approval was triggered on a workflow.

Reset Approvals

Resetting an approval means marking previously completed approvals as incomplete when certain changes are made to a workflow. You can configure this in Workflow Designer based on the following actions (rather than conditions):

• Workflow Reverts to Review: Approvals will be reset if the workflow is reverted to the Review stage.
• Draft Documents Update: Approvals will be reset if the workflow’s draft document’s are updated.
• Field Changes: Approvals will be reset if the field you select is updated at any point in the workflow’s process.
• Always: Approvals will be reset in all of the situations listed above and when workflows are resumed. This is the setting by default.
• Never: Approvals will never be reset, unless a company admin overrides it.

Company admins—users in the Administrators group or those with “Workflow Management” permissions—can override reset approval settings during actions like editing properties, uploading or renaming documents, or removing documents. Clause approvals are excluded from this override capability.