Approval Groups

The Approval groups view in the Workflow section lists the active groups name, group members, their permissions, and a quick link to email the group.

*Approval groups

To add an approval group, follow these steps:

Go to the Workflow section.
Click on Approval groups.
Click Create Group.
Enter a Name for the Approval Group. For example: Danish Editors.
Enter a Description to remind you why the group exists.
Enter the group's Email address in the Settings section to which the notifications will be sent.
Select the Language from the drop-down list.
Enable offline approval to allow users in this group to approve changes without logging in to the backoffice.
Click Save Group.

*Create Approval Groups

You can create a total of 5 groups on unlicensed installations. The paid license removes this restriction.

You can search for a specific group using the Search bar. Select a group from the list to edit its Settings, Roles, Members, and view the group's History.

Approval Groups Settings

The Settings tab consists of the following fields:

Group Email: Workflow notifications are sent to a generic inbox (a group's email address) rather than the individual group members.
Language: Select a language variant for the email.
Enable Offline approval: Allow the users of this group to approve changes without logging in to the Backoffice. For more information, see the Enable Offline approval section. This feature requires a paid license.

*Approval group Settings

Enable Offline Approval

You can optionally provide Groups permission to action workflow tasks without logging in to pTools Umbraco. This feature requires a paid license. By Enabling Offline Approval, all email notifications sent to the group members will include a personalized link to a preview page.

The preview page exposes the current saved page with the options to approve or reject the change. It is not possible to edit the content from the offline approval view.

This feature is useful where the approval group membership is a single user who does not use pTools Umbraco. For example, a manager may want to approve media releases before publishing but does not otherwise need access to pTools Umbraco.

Offline approval requires a user to exist in the Backoffice and be assigned to a workflow group. They do not need to know how to use pTools Umbraco or even know their login credentials.

Roles

The Roles tab provides an overview of the current workflow roles for the Group:

Node-based approvals: This workflow applies only to the specified node.
Document-type approvals: This workflow applies to all the nodes of a given Document Type.

You can set these Roles in the Workflow Settings section.

*Approval group Roles

Members

The Members tab manages the membership for the given user group. Add members to approval groups to determine which member will be responsible for approving content changes. Group Members can be explicitly added to the group or can inherit group membership from an existing Umbraco group. Ideally, group members are set explicitly to ensure changes made to Umbraco groups do not cause unexpected changes to workflow permissions.

*Approval group Members

To add a Group member, follow these steps:

Go to the Workflow section.
Click on Approval groups.
Select a group from the list to edit its Members.
Go to the Members tab.
Click Add in the Group members section.
Select the Users you want to add to the approval group.
Click Save Group.

*Add group Members

To remove a Group member, click Remove.

To inherit an existing Umbraco group membership, follow these steps:

Go to the Workflow section.
Click on Approval groups.
Select a group from the list to edit its Members.
Go to the Members tab.
Click Add in the Inherited group membership section.
Select the User groups you want to add to the approval group.
Click Save Group.

*Inherited group membership

To remove a Group membership, click Remove.

History

The History tab provides an overview of the workflow activity for the current group. It displays a table containing the following details:

Page name with the Language variant

Type of workflow roles (Node-based approvals or Document type approvals)
Workflow requested by
Date the workflow was requested on
Comment describing the changes
Status of the workflow

*Approval group history

You can also Filter the records based on the Node, Requested by, Created date, Completed date, Page Language, Workflow Type, and Workflow Status. Additionally, you can adjust the total number of records displayed on a page.

The Detail button at the end of the record displays an overlay with content similar to the Active workflow sub-section.