LP3: Editing an Approval/Bypass an Approver/Abort an Approval Early

Emily Hawley

Updated 06 October 2025 13:22

Introduction

Users are able to edit approvals to add approval steps, change assignees, skip (bypass) assignees or abort the approval entirely.

Note: if an ad-hoc approver would like to receive an email of their approval step, the approver needs to be added before the step has started.

Edit an Approval

1. Go to your Activities page and select the activity you are working on.

2. Navigate to the 'Tasks' tab and locate the approval you are wanting to edit. Select '...' to the right side of the approval (as seen below).

3. In the edit approval page, you can see the different steps in the current approval task. To change any of these steps, select the pen tool at the right side of the approval step. This will display more editing functions.

Note: When editing the top approval, you can edit the step name (this is the approval name). This view also shows the overall duration of the approval (as seen in the above screenshot).

4. When you select the pen tool on any of the current steps, you can update the step name, duration, contacts, predecessors and approval options.

Note: when the duration of an approval step is changed, this will update the overall duration of the approval which can be seen on the top approval when you select the edit button (pen button).

5. To add contacts to an approval step, select the plus in the 'Select assignees' section. This means that all contacts will review the asset at this stage before moving to the next step of the approval.

When adding a new assignee, to an approval you are able to mark them as bypassable or not (this feature is explained in the next section).

6. Changing the predecessors changes the order of the approval steps.

When editing the predecessors for an approval step, you need to select the approval step you would like to follow from. The predecessors must be set in the correct order that you would like the approval to follow.

Note: Where an ad-hoc approval has been added prior to the final approval step ensure that the predecessors are also updated in the final approval step to capture the new ad-hoc approval step.

7. To add an approval step into an approval cycle, select '+ step' at the top of the edit approval page.

8. Once the new step has been added, fill in the step name, duration, assignees, predecessors and the approval options.

9. Once all details are filled in, you can see the predecessors on the left side and you also have the option to delete (red 'X' button) a step approval when you are editing that step.

Approval Bypass

Assignees can be bypassed for both running and pending approval tasks.

Running approval: If the approval is currently running, the bypassed step will be skipped immediately and the next task in the ordinal will start.
Pending approval: If the approval is pending, the step will be skipped when the ordinal reaches it and the user will not receive an email notification.

How to bypass an assignee

Navigate to the Activity summary page and select the Tasks tab.
Under the 'Actions' column for the approver you wish to bypass, select the three dots ‘…’ and select 'Bypass Assignee'.
Enter a reason for the bypass in the dialog. This reason will be recorded in the workflow as a reference.
Confirm the bypass. The task will be skipped as described above.

Note: Workflow tasks assigned to a role or group of users can be bypassed if the task has been configured as bypassable.

Abort Approval

An approval can be aborted if necessary: this will completely skip the approval process and route to a new brief stage. This will be most commonly used if a mistake has been spotted on the artwork as the artwork goes on approval, meaning the user does not want the client to review the artwork in its current state.

1. To abort an approval, go to the 'Tasks' tab in an activity:

2. Go to the '...' on the approval you wish to abort, click it and 'abort approval' option will pop up:

3. You will be asked to provide a reason for the abort & whether you want to send an email to the assignees once aborted. Enter your password and select 'Abort Approval' to complete this task.

See more:

LP2: Transfer Tasks

LP2: Using the Consult Contacts Feature

LP3: Bypassing a Stage