Formal review

An approval is a single decision: a person approves or rejects. When your quality process requires a document to go through collecting feedback, dispositioning it, revising and re-approving before publication (IEEE 1028 inspection, ISO 9001 document control), you use a review instead. The two live side by side; review does not replace approval. Starting a review requires the "Request approval and start reviews" permission, and a page can have only one open review at a time. On Kanban and Scrum boards tasks can be reviewed too (v1.106.0): turn on the Review section under Board Settings > Task Screen (off by default); the flow is the same, the final stage reads "Approved" on a task, in the report window and in the report export, and the task is not locked during the review; details on the Workflows and fields page. The role matrix of Kanban and Scrum boards also shows the "Request approval and start reviews" permission, so a custom role can be allowed to start a review on a task (v1.107.0). If the space’s publishing rule is "Approval first, then review", a review can only be started after an approval has been granted. The process belongs to the submitter, chosen when the review is opened and by default the person who opens it. The submitter closes feedback collection, decides each feedback item, marks items resolved and moves the steps on. If needed they stop it with "Cancel Review"; collected feedback and decisions stay on record. In the review panel and its emails findings are called "feedback"; the general discussion at the bottom of the page stays "comments" (v1.94.0). Another member of the board can be chosen as submitter; that person must be an active user with access to the board and, on a restricted page, must be able to see the page. People added to the board through a group can also be chosen as submitter and as individual participants (v1.107.0).

How the process works

1. 1Collecting feedback · Participants read the document and write what they see with "Add Feedback", each with a severity; the relevant sentence can be quoted, and severity defaults to Major. Nobody is obliged to give feedback; a reviewer may simply find nothing wrong. The submitter closes collection with "Close Feedback Collection", after a confirmation; if automatic closing was chosen, it closes by itself when the due date arrives. Each participant can mark that they have finished with "My feedback is done" and remove the mark with "Undo"; the mark shows next to their name in the participant list, so the submitter can see whose feedback is still expected. It is informational, does not close collection, and clears by itself when the review returns to a new round.
2. 2Disposition · The submitter closes every feedback item with a decision. Rejected and conditional decisions require a written reason; when accepting, a "Note (optional)" can be added (v1.77.0). At this stage the submitter can also add feedback; it joins this round’s feedback awaiting a decision.
3. 3Revision · Items accepted outright or with conditions are applied to the document and marked “Resolved”; final approval cannot start until all of them are. Moving to final approval advances the document version one step (0.1 → 0.2).
4. 4Final approval · The "Approve" button is shown only to participants marked "Approval required", and the review completes once all of them have approved. Optional participants do not approve and do not hold up the process; if they have feedback they write it with “I Have Feedback”. If someone says “I Have Feedback” in this round, they add as much feedback as they need, and only when they submit does the process return to disposition and the round counter go up. At that point, before any feedback of the new round is decided, the submitter can choose "Open New Feedback Round" to send the process back to feedback collection: every participant can give feedback on the corrected document again, "My feedback is done" marks are reset, everyone is notified and a "New due date (optional)" can be set. The document content stays locked and earlier rounds keep their feedback and decisions; without it the process continues straight to disposition (v1.94.0). That option cannot be submitted without feedback; apart from it, free feedback entry is closed during final approval, and approval cannot be given while any feedback item is still without a decision. When a review is started or edited, an optional "Final approval deadline" (1 to 365 days) and what happens "When it expires" can be set: "count non-responders as approved" or "stop waiting for non-responders"; a default from the space’s publishing rule is pre-filled. The deadline starts when final approval begins and starts over if the review returns via “I Have Feedback” and reaches final approval again; the panel shows the date it expires. When it expires, the chosen outcome is applied to required participants who have not decided and the review completes by itself, with "Deadline passed" next to their names. It does not close while a feedback item is still undecided; the daily scheduled job applies it even if nobody opens the page.
5. 5Ready to publish · Approvals complete and the page becomes publishable. The document cannot be edited until it is published (content, title, tags, attachments, version restore); if it needs changes, start a new review.

app.themyway.app/docs/payments-api/review

Feedback severities and decisions

• Severity: Critical, Major, Minor, Editorial. The list is ordered by severity, so critical items stay on top.
• Decision: Accepted, Accepted with conditions, Rejected, Duplicate, Deferred.
• Severity and decision options are fixed and do not vary per board. If they did, cross-board comparison and the audit report would lose their meaning.
• Feedback belongs to a round: round 2 feedback never blurs into round 1.

Filtering and dispositioning feedback

Feedback opens in a "List" or a "Table" view, and the filters are shared by both: search (#3, text or person), Round, Author, Severity, Disposition and Resolved state. You can, for example, filter one person’s feedback and disposition it on the same screen in the list view. When filters apply, a counter tells you how many items are shown ("Showing 12 of 30 feedback items", for example).

• The table is read-only and sorts by clicking a column header (No, Round, Severity, Author, Disposition, Date). Clicking the feedback number (#3) opens the item in the list view, where the decision is made; clicking the rest of the row does not switch views, so text in the table can be selected and copied.
• Quick filters: during disposition "Undecided" shows this round’s undecided feedback with their count, and "My feedback" filters the ones you wrote.
• During disposition the submitter sees the progress: "Dispositioned: 4 / 9" with a progress bar next to it.
• Once a decision is saved, focus moves to the next undecided feedback item in the filtered list, so the selected items can be decided one after another. In the reason box Ctrl+Enter saves and Esc cancels. A decision can be corrected with "Change" during this stage.

Participants

• A participant can be a person or a group. When you pick a group, its members become individual participants as the review starts: someone later removed from the group does not retroactively change who had to approve.
• New participants are marked “Approval required” by default, and at least one required approver is needed. The review cannot complete without the approval of the required participants.
• "Select all" in the people heading selects everyone matching the search, and "Clear" removes them (v1.77.0)
• The participant list is sorted alphabetically by name; the search box filters by name, username or email and also finds matching people inside groups.
• When starting, you can use "What to look for" to tell reviewers what to focus on. Only groups added to the board are offered, and you can pick individual people from a group.
• Only the author can delete a feedback item, and only while feedback is being collected; deleting asks for confirmation ("Delete this feedback?"). Once collection closes, deleting closes too: the decisions rest on that set of feedback, and the set must not change afterwards.
• If a required approver never responds in final approval and blocks the process, the submitter can skip them with "Waive approval"; it asks for confirmation and the decision is recorded in the report.
• The submitter can change an open review with "Edit": add or remove participants, change who must approve, and change the due date, the final approval deadline, the "What to look for" text, the source of section headings and the submitter. A participant who has already decided cannot be removed, since the decision is part of the record; at least one required approver must remain. If the due date changes, reminders start over for the new date.
• Anyone without access to the board is silently dropped from the participant list.

Importing Word comments

The document under review often travels as a Word file, and comments pile up in Word’s margin notes. "Import Word comments" in the feedback form asks for a .docx file and previews the comments in it with the marked text and their author. You pick the comments to import and the severity they all get (Minor by default). Each Word comment becomes a feedback item in the name of the person importing it; the author’s name in Word is noted at the end of it ("Word comment: Ayşe Kaya"), so the trail is kept. The marked text is taken as the quote, or, if nothing was marked, the heading of the section the comment falls in.

app.themyway.app/docs/supplier-evaluation/review

• Importing follows the rules for giving feedback: participants and the submitter can import while feedback is being collected, and the submitter during disposition too; it is closed during final approval
• Feedback items are numbered in order. A batch is added entirely or not at all, so an import is never left half done

Section headings

The "Which part of the document?" field of a feedback item suggests the headings from the review’s section heading source; typing something else is fine. The source is picked under "Section headings" when the review is opened or edited: "From the page content" or one of the page’s Word (.docx) attachments. If the document under review came in as an attachment, picking it ties the feedback to that document’s own sections. Each Word attachment is listed with the date and time it was added, so files with the same name can be told apart (v1.91.0). Only an attachment of the page under review can be chosen; another page’s attachment would leak the headings of a file the participants cannot see.

The document freezes, feedback items get numbers

• While a review is open, the document’s content, title, tags and attachments cannot be changed and no earlier version can be restored; they reopen for the rework round. Everyone looks at the same version - the sentence you are giving feedback on does not change under you.
• When a review starts, the page’s attachments are stamped with the version under review (e.g. v0.1). A new file added in the rework round shows as "working" and takes the version it is published in, so it stays clear afterwards which file was reviewed and which was corrected and published (v1.92.0).
• Every feedback item receives a permanent number (#1, #2), identical in the panel and in the audit report. Saying “the third item” in a meeting points at exactly one thing.
• When the review completes and the document is published, the published version is stamped onto the review (“1.0 published”) and that record never changes again. The same publication shows in the document’s "Published versions" list with a "Review" badge.
• If someone says “I Have Feedback” in final approval and the process steps back, the reason they wrote is shown on the step it returned to; feedback still undecided in that round move to the new round.
• If the document changes after approval, the panel warns "The document changed after approval" and shows the approved and current versions. Completed or cancelled reviews stay under "Previous reviews".

The publish lock

A page with a review in progress cannot be published; once the review completes, the “Publish” button in the page editor unlocks. A pending approval request blocks publishing in the same way; the two processes are separate, but both come before publication. Beyond that, the space’s publishing rule can require a completed review for every publication: the rule is on by default, and a space outside the quality system switches it off under Space Settings > General > Publishing rule. When both a review and an approval are required, the order between them is set in the rule as well. See the "Publishing rule" section on the Docs space page for details.

app.themyway.app/docs/payments-api

My Reviews and Approvals

"My Reviews and Approvals" in the sidebar gathers, from every board, the work waiting for your feedback, decision or approval, with a pending count next to the entry. The page uses the same card layout as Mentions: a red stripe on overdue items, a yellow one when less than a day is left, 20 at a time with "Load more" for older ones (v1.106.0). There are five stages: "Your feedback is due" (during collection, unless you marked "My feedback is done"), "Your final approval is due" (if you are a required participant and not waived), "Your disposition is due" and "Your revision is due" (on reviews you submitted) and "Your approval is due" (an approval request whose turn has come). Each card shows the type icon (Page, Task, Baseline), title, board and stage, and the due date with the time left or overdue; the nearest due date comes first. During collection the due date is the review’s due date, in final approval the moment the final approval deadline expires. The same list can be added to the home page as the "My reviews and approvals" widget (v1.95.0).

The audit report

Every review has a report you can open on screen and download as PDF or Markdown. Any board member who can see the review in the panel can open its report; being a participant is not required (v1.104.0). It answers what an audit asks: who took part, who was required, whose approval was waived, who gave how much feedback and who gave none, what severities came in, who raised and who decided each item, the reasons behind rejections and conditional decisions, how many rounds and days it took, and which version was approved.

app.themyway.app/docs/payments-api/review/report