Screens
Approval policies and votes
Rules a release must meet before it goes live, and votes that help the approver decide.
Approval policies
A policy names who must approve: pick people, groups or both under Who must approve. Each pick is one approval: a person must approve themselves; a group is met when anyone in it approves. Three picks means three approvals. It covers every Brand in the workspace or just one. Some apply to breaking releases only. A workspace Admin or Owner sets them with New policy.
Each Reviewer who approves is counted. Until every policy that applies is met, the release stays waiting for review and the Command Center shows which ones still need approvals. Stoaken checks this in the database itself, so nothing can publish around it.
A policy only ever asks for approvals someone can actually give. When the proposer is the only person who can approve (a workspace of one, or a group whose only member proposed it), their own approval counts, even with The proposer's own approval doesn't count ticked. A pick nobody can meet any more, such as a group whose members have all left, never holds a release up. The same goes for a workspace that requires a different person to approve: it applies while there is a different person.
Tip: With no policies, one Reviewer’s approval publishes a release, as before.
Approval policies are in Organization, one of the pages under the workspace’s name. A Brand’s own Brand settings lists the ones that apply to it.
When someone named in a policy leaves
A pick of someone who has left reads their name with (left) after it: “this pick is skipped until you replace it”. Nobody else can give that approval, so the policy doesn’t wait for it and releases go live without it. (“Skipped” is Stoaken’s estimate from who can approve today.) Edit the policy to pick someone else (a policy can’t be saved while it still names someone who left), or hand it over from Members.
The same goes for a group whose only member who could approve has left: a pick of that group is skipped until someone who can approve joins it. On the Command Center, a review handed to someone who left reads Handed to their name (left), and comments by someone who left say (former member).
Picks that would be skipped
Only a Reviewer, Admin or Owner on a release’s Brand can approve it, and only an Admin or Owner when it removes a token. A pick that nobody can meet is skipped, so the policy counts as met without it. Under each policy, a pick says when that would happen today: Viewer only, so this pick is skipped, Reviewer on a Brand only (skipped on the other Brands), or Needs an Admin for releases that remove tokens. A group pick says so when nobody in the group can approve.
On a release waiting for review, the same thing shows under the policy it affects, with the reason, for example “Counts as met without Sam (left the workspace)”. Admins also get Fix in Approval policies. Skipped picks still count as met: nothing is held up, and the note is there so it isn’t a surprise.
Votes
On a release waiting for review, Open a vote asks people what they think: everyone on the Brand, or only chosen groups. You can add token paths to vote on one by one, and a closing time.
Votes advise; they never approve or reject on their own. The tally updates live as people vote.