Approvals

What an approval is and where to find it#

An approval is one proposal from an agent: a document, a new goal or todo, a change to something that exists, a reply in the advisor's name. As an advisor you see them in Approvals, which lists the open ones of all your workspaces, most urgent first. Decided approvals leave the list; you find their trace on the item itself (its history) and in the agent history.

Chat answers and documents you ask for in the chat are not approvals. They come straight back to you. A few other decisions have their own spot: text changes are suggestions in the text, memory entries are decided on the Brain page, and connections between items in the Explorer. Arvemo's own offers are in Proposals.

Approve, change or discard#

1. Open Approvals and select an approval. Its draft, the agent that wrote it and the task behind it are shown.
2. Read it. Under Conversation you can write a comment; the agent that made the proposal answers in the thread or revises it.
3. Choose one:
   • Approve applies the proposal. On the web and the Mac the shortcut is ⌘↩ (Ctrl+Enter on Windows).
   • Edit lets you change the draft yourself first (⌘E on web and Mac); you then approve your version.
   • Discard throws it away (⌫ on the web and the Mac). It never asks; see the undo below.
4. If the approval belongs to a colleague, Take over makes it yours.

On the iPhone and iPad the same buttons sit at the foot of the page. A proposal made of several parts (a chain) lets you untick single parts before you approve. A discarded document goes to the archive; it can be brought back there as a draft.

Undo and grace period#

Approving and discarding wait five seconds before they are sent. The item leaves your list at once and a message with Undo appears; click it within those five seconds and nothing happened. After that the decision cannot be taken back. On the web, leaving the page sends a waiting decision at once; in the apps it is sent when you switch workspace or leave the app.

This is different from removing an object. Remove (or Close, Archive and similar, depending on the type) is the ordinary way to take an existing item out of the workspace, and it also has an undo. A client's request to remove some types of item becomes a proposal to the advisor.

Have it revised#

You do not have to accept or discard. Comment on the approval, or mark places in the check list and choose Have it revised ({{count}}): the agent rewrites the marked paragraphs and the approval gets a new version, shown with its version number. Show changes compares it with the one before. While the agent revises, approving and discarding are paused; you decide on the new version when it arrives.

The check list#

For document proposals, Arvemo checks the draft before you approve and shows the findings in Check list beside it (Hide check list and Show check list toggle it). It looks at whether the brief was answered, whether the text contradicts engagement decisions or goals, whether sources and citations hold up, and at your own house rules. It also lists the document's core statements, and for each you answer that you share it or see it differently.

Per finding you can accept, reject, ask, or change the text yourself; on the web and the Mac the keys are J and K to move, A, X, F and S for the actions. On the iPhone the list leads you step by step and shows which step of how many you are on. If important findings are open, approving asks once: Approve anyway.

How thoroughly Arvemo checks is set per document type (Thorough, Standard, Direction only, Off) in the approval settings (Approvals in your settings); owners and admins of the organisation change it. Only the advisor side sees the check.

Who may approve#

Colleagues on the advisor side approve; clients do not, whatever their role. The organisation chooses the rule in the approval settings (Approvals): any colleague in the workspace, only the lead, or the lead or the person asked. A workspace may be stricter than its organisation, never looser.

Two additions. Where the organisation uses the rule Proposals of the client side, the client's Responsible decides first, but only passes proposals on to you. Where the plan includes it, what reaches the client needs a second person (four eyes).

If an approval waits too long (3 days by default, 1 to 14 selectable), the lead and the organisation's owners and admins are reminded, and your deputy takes over, if you named one.

What the client side sees#

Clients have no Approvals place. A client's own proposal (for example a new goal) shows on the item with a note that it waits for the advisor, and she can withdraw it. If the organisation uses the rule Proposals of the client side, the client with the role Responsible sees her team's proposals first on Today and passes them on or discards them.

The number that waits for you#

The one number counts what needs a person: open approvals, agent results that need a look, and unread @-mentions. That is the advisor's number. For a client it counts only unread @-mentions, and for the person with the role Responsible also the team proposals waiting for her. Details are on the notifications page. The Mac Dock badge differs: it shows only the open approvals (advisors) or the unread notifications (clients).

Common questions#