External Approvals 2.0: even more control

A little while ago we launched external approvals for enabling clients, legal, or other departments to approve posts without ever needing a Swat.io login. Since then you’ve given us a lot of feedback, mostly on one theme: you want finer control over who can approve and when a post really counts as approved. From now on, that control is yours. Five improvements turn the first version into an approval process you steer down to the detail.

How it works

There are now different roles for reviewers, too. 🎉

Until now, every external person you added could approve a post. Now you set a role per person when you add them:

• Can approve: view, comment on, and approve posts.
• Comment only: view and comment on posts, but not approve. The approve button is hidden for these people.

That way you can bring in legal or a manager, for example, so they can give input but without approval authority. You can change these roles, and the list of reviewers, at any time.

Assign reviewers to specific posts

Until now, every reviewer in your workspace saw every post you sent for approval. Now you choose who should see a specific post when you send it, for a single post just as much as for several at once. Only the assigned people see the post in the portal, get the email notification, and only their decisions count.

See at a glance who has already approved

Before, you had to go into the portal to check where an approval stood. Now you see it right on the post: in the composer, in the list view, and in the calendar view. Per reviewer, with email and status, you can tell who has already approved and who is still open. The overview appears as soon as the first person has responded.

On top of that, the small user icon in the calendar overview shows you which posts have already been approved.

Approve or reject: reviewers with approval rights decide when a post is done

This is the biggest change from the first version. Before, a post switched to “Externally approved” as soon as a single person had approved it. Now it runs in a more controlled way:

• Every individual approval is still recorded and counted.
• But the post’s overall status stays on “Pending” until someone deliberately sets it to “Approved” or “Rejected”.
• This also means a post can now be actively rejected, not just approved.
• Only when all reviewers have individually approved does the status jump to “Approved” automatically.

So a single early approval no longer marks a post as done too soon. You decide when enough sign-off has come in.

What stays the same: the status in Swat.io remains “Suggested”, even once the post has been finally approved in the portal.

Pull a post out of approval or restart the process

Until now, a post you’d sent stayed in the queue. Now you can pull it back out, whether you sent it by accident, still want to rework it, or the team has decided not to publish it. You do this via the dropdown on the “Ext. approval” button, as long as the post has been sent and its scheduled date isn’t in the past. The approvals collected so far are reset and the reviewers are automatically notified by email. Your full history in the activity log stays intact.

It works in much the same way when an approval process needs to start over, for example because the post was completely reworked. Just click “Restart review” in the same dropdown menu.

Note: External Approvals are only available in the Custom and Agency plans.

Good to know

• Comment only doesn’t count toward approval: People with the Comment-only role don’t appear in the approval counter and aren’t counted as approvers.
• Approving still doesn’t publish automatically: Even a post with the status “Approved” won’t publish on its own. Publishing stays a separate step in Swat.io that you trigger yourself.
• Pulling back or restarting deletes no history: When you pull a post back or restart, only the collected approvals are reset. Every entry in the activity log stays fully intact.

Your benefit

You now decide who gets a say in an approval, who is allowed to sign off, and who even sees which post in the first place. And when something changes, you pull a post out of approval in two clicks.

“Someone approved it” becomes a process you steer: the right people with the right rights on the right post, a clear yes or no, and the full history traceable at any time. Especially valuable for agencies and for teams in regulated industries and the public sector that have to document every approval.

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This might also be interesting for you:

• External approval: instructions for appoval flow in Swat.io
• External approval: instructions for reviewer portal

If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to our Support Team via chat or at support@swat.io!