Approval Workflows let you require a second review before a reply, hide, delete, or like from a specific team member or AI agent goes live in the Inbox. When a covered action is taken, Agorapulse pauses the item in a Pending Approval state until a designated approver reviews it. This provides a built-in check for quality control, a safe way to onboard new team members, and a safety net for AI agents acting on your social profiles.
In this article, we will cover:
Please note: Inbox Approval Workflows are only available on Professional, Advanced, and Tailored subscription plans. Please reach out to our support team if you would like access to this feature.
How Inbox Approval Workflows work across different plans
Approval Workflows are available on the Professional, Advanced, and Tailored plans. Depending on your plan, you will have different options available to you.
Professional and Advanced: Can create one workflow with one team member and one approver. AI agents cannot be added as team members on these plans.
Tailored: Create unlimited workflows, with multiple team members, multiple approvers, and AI agents as team members.
How to configure Inbox Approval Workflows
New Approval Workflows can be created from the Inbox section of the settings screen. To create an Approval Workflow, you will need to:
Click your avatar at the bottom left of the screen.
Select Organization settings
Under Inbox, click Approval workflows
Click +Create new workflow
Enter a name for the workflow
Select the social profile(s) or Custom Inbox that the workflow will be applied to
Select the user(s) that this workflow will apply to
Select the action or actions that trigger the workflow:
Reply (Available on all networks)
Hide (Available only for Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X (Twitter), TikTok, & YouTube)
Delete (Available only on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn)
Label (Available on all networks)
Note: If Reply is selected, you can choose whether to enable Ignore saved replies from approval. With this enabled, a team member who sends an approved saved reply skips the approval workflow. However, editing the saved reply will cause the workflow to be triggered.
Select the approver(s) who will review pending items.
Note: On Professional and Advanced, you can select only one approver; on Tailored, you can select multiple approversToggle on or off if approvers will receive an email for every item requiring approval.
Click Save changes
Now, when the selected team member(s) perform the selected action(s) in the inbox, the team member will receive a pop-up saying that the item will be locked while approval is pending.
Please note: You can create only one workflow per social profile for each team member, and you cannot pair the same team member with the same action more than once. Save changes remains unavailable until you have named the workflow and set the team members, action, and approver.
How to edit an Inbox Approval Workflow
Editing a workflow is not retroactive. Items already pending keep the workflow they were submitted under, and changes apply only to new items going forward.
To edit a workflow, you will need to:
Click on your avatar and select Organization settings
Under Inbox, click on Approval Workflows
Select your chosen approval workflow
Make any required changes
Click Save changes
If you want to delete an approval workflow, click the Delete workflow (bin icon) button.
Please note: Inbox Approval Workflows can only be created, edited, or deleted by Owners, Co-Owners, & Managers.
How to approve an action in an Approval Workflow
When a selected teammate performs one of the selected actions (Reply, Hide, Delete, or Like) in the inbox, the relevant Approval Workflow will be triggered. To approve one of these actions, you will need to:
Navigate to the Inbox and click on the relevant Custom Inbox or Social Profile
Click on the To approve inbox filter
Select the inbox item that you want to approve
Note: The name of the Approval Workflow that was triggered will appear above the inbox item along with the action that was performed and the name of the team member that triggered it.At the bottom of the inbox item, you will see the action that was performed along with the following approval options:
Approve: Approve the action taken by the team member. Click Approve in the pop-up to confirm this action
Take over: Click the down arrow (⌄) next to Approve to select this option. Taking over cancels the approval workflow: pending actions like hide, delete, or mark as reviewed are dropped. Draft replies and labels stay in place, so you can keep editing from there. Click Take over in the pop-up to confirm this action
Request changes: Select a team member from the drop-down and leave a message with the desired changes. Click Assign in the pop-up to confirm this action. This action is not offered for items submitted by AI agents.
Things to know
While a reply is pending approval, the team member's response time stops counting in reports.
Send in Private behaves exactly like Send: a matching reply workflow triggers, and the button shows as a greyed-out Send in Private once the item is pending.
If an item was assigned to a team member before a workflow triggered, the item drops its assignment and becomes an item to approve.