Approval steps

Some actions are too important to run automatically — issuing a refund above a threshold, sending a contract, changing a customer's plan. An approval step pauses a workflow at that moment and waits for a person to approve or reject before anything else happens. It's the human-in-the-loop checkpoint for the parts of a process that need a second pair of eyes.

How it works

When a workflow reaches a Wait for approval step, it stops and sends a request to the reviewers you chose. The workflow stays paused — doing nothing further — until someone decides:

• Approved — the workflow continues to the next step.
• Rejected — the workflow takes the rejection path you set (for example, notify the customer or route to a person).
• Still waiting — nothing happens; the request stays open until it's decided or it times out.

Add a Wait for approval step

1. Open your workflow and add a Wait for approval step at the point that needs sign-off.
2. Write the message reviewers will see — include the context they need to decide, such as the customer, the amount, or the action being requested.
3. Choose who can approve — a Slack channel, specific people, or a team.
4. Set what happens on approve and on reject by connecting each path to the next steps.
5. Optionally set a timeout — how long to wait before the request expires and follows the reject path.

Connect Slack

Most teams approve from Slack, where they already work. To send approval requests to Slack, connect your Slack workspace once:

1. Open Workspace settings and choose Connect Slack.
2. Approve the connection in Slack and pick the channels Convoship may post to.
3. Back in your approval step, select the Slack channel (or people) that should receive the request.

Once connected, approval requests arrive in Slack as a message with Approve and Reject buttons — no need to leave Slack to act on them.

Approve or reject

In Slack

The request appears in the channel or as a direct message with the context you wrote and two buttons. Click Approve or Reject, and the workflow continues down the matching path immediately. The message updates to show who decided and when, so the whole channel can see the outcome.

In the in-app inbox

Every pending request also waits in the in-app Approvals inbox. Open it to see what's awaiting a decision, read the full context, and approve or reject there. Slack and the inbox stay in sync — deciding in one immediately resolves the request in the other.

Timeouts and reminders

If a request sits too long, a timeout keeps the process from stalling forever — when it expires, the workflow follows the reject path so the customer isn't left waiting indefinitely. Set the timeout to match how quickly your team realistically responds.