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Build a simple approval workflow

By the end of this guide, your team will be able to submit a record for review, and the reviewer will see it in their personal task list, where they can approve or reject it by changing the status.

How this works in Engine Awesome

Engine Awesome does not have a built-in approval routing system. This guide shows you a manual workflow pattern:

  1. A team member fills out a record and sets its status to Pending Review.
  2. They assign it to the approver.
  3. The approver sees it in their My Tasks screen.
  4. The approver opens it, reviews it, and sets the status to Approved or Rejected.

This is a fully functional approval process for most small business use cases.

What you'll need before you start

  • An Object Type you want to add approvals to. For this guide: Purchase Requests.
  • The My Tasks view already set up, so reviewers have a screen to work from.
  • Administrator access.

Step 1: Add a Status field

  1. Go to Settings → Object Types → Purchase Requests.
  2. Click Add Field.
  3. Choose Dropdown.
  4. Label it Status.
  5. Add these options: Draft, Pending Review, Approved, Rejected.
  6. Mark it as Is Searchable.
  7. Click Save.

Step 2: Add an Assigned To field

If you already did the My Tasks guide, this field may already exist. If not:

  1. Click Add Field.
  2. Choose Engine Awesome User.
  3. Set Semantic to User.
  4. Label it Assigned To.
  5. Mark it as Is Searchable.
  6. Click Save.

Step 3: Update the Item layout

  1. Click Edit on your Item layout.
  2. Add the Status and Assigned To fields if they're not already there.
  3. Add a Save action button.
  4. Click Save.

Step 4: Test the workflow

  1. Create a new Purchase Request.
  2. Fill in the details.
  3. Set Status to Pending Review.
  4. Set Assigned To to the person who needs to approve it.
  5. Click Save.
  6. Log in as the approver (or ask them to check their My Tasks screen).
  7. The record should appear in their My Tasks list.
  8. The approver opens it, reviews it, and sets Status to Approved or Rejected.
  9. Click Save.

The workflow is complete.

Optional: Add a notes field for rejection reason

If you want the approver to explain a rejection:

  1. Add a Textarea field labeled Review Notes.
  2. Add it to the Item layout after the Status field.
  3. Click Save.

What to do next

← PreviousBuild a My Tasks viewNext →Build a time tracker