Ask a person for an approval or an answer

Ask a person — The run waits for a person to answer — asks one or more people in the workspace a question and holds the run until it is answered. Each answer you define becomes a path out of the step, so Approve can make a payment while Reject tells the accounts team why. Use it for an approval before money moves, or any decision a workflow should not make on its own.

People are asked in the Bizomate app — the Requests page and the bell in the top bar — on Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram and SMS once they are available and the person has linked them, and by email, always last. WhatsApp and RCS come next.

Who can do this

Workspace Admins and Editors add and change the step, on every plan. Viewers can open it but not change it.

You can ask members of the workspace, by name, or the person who started the run. Nobody outside the workspace can be asked. How they answer is in Answer a request.

Steps

1. Select + where the question should be asked. In the step picker, open Logic and select Ask for approval — Approve or Reject — the run waits for the answer — or Ask a person. Both add Ask a person, starting with Approval. Or search approval.
2. In Start from, choose:
   • Approval (the default) — Approve and Reject. Reject asks for a reason.
   • Yes or no — Yes and No.
   • Your own answers — up to 10 answers you name, each a path of its own, and Reply in words if you want it.
3. In Ask, type the question — The question each person sees. Select fields from earlier steps to put real values in it. For example Pay invoice {{ trigger.invoice_no }} from {{ trigger.vendor }}? The person sees Pay invoice INV-3381 from Northwind Logistics?
4. Under Answers, set up the answers. The count beside it says how many you have, for example 3 of 10.
   • With Your own answers, select Add an answer for another one, and type its label — up to 20 characters. Choose its kind: Go ahead, Stop or Neither, which sets its colour. Select Reply in words for an answer the person types in their own words; Remove Reply in words takes it away again. With Approval and Yes or no, the two answers keep their names.
   • Tick Ask for a reason to ask the person why when they choose that answer. The person may leave the reason out unless you also tick Required.
   • Fill in Confirm in Bizomate from when that answer needs more care from an amount up — for example Approve from 5,000: at 5,000 or more, the person confirms the answer with their passkey or authenticator code. Leave it at Any amount when it does not matter.
5. If any answer has Confirm in Bizomate from, fill in Amount with the amount to compare — for example {{ trigger.amount }}. Compared with each answer's Confirm in Bizomate from, in your company's currency.
6. Under the second Ask, choose the people: select Add a person…, then a member of the workspace — in the example, Rohan Mehta and Asha Raghunathan — or The person who started the run. Select the × on a name to take it off.
7. With Approval or Yes or no, choose Who has to answer:
   • Any one of them (the default) — the first answer from any of them decides the path.
   • Everyone — Everyone is offered with Approval and Yes or no only: the first Reject ends it; it goes ahead when all approve. The same goes for No and Yes.
8. In Reach them on, choose:
   • Their own order (the default) — each person's channels in the order they chose, email last. Each person's order is set in Account › Answer requests on.
   • Only these channels — then tick the channels to use: The Bizomate app, Slack, Telegram and SMS when they are available, Email.
9. In Try the next channel after, choose 5 min, 15 min (the default) or 1 hour — how long a person has on one channel before the question also goes to their next one.
10. In If nobody answers in, choose 1 hour, 4 hours, 24 hours (the default), 3 days or 7 days. Then the run goes down the No answer path.
11. Read the line under the settings — Each person gets up to 2 messages. — one for each channel the step may use.

On the canvas there is one path per answer, named after it, then Reply in words if you added it, and No answer. Add the steps for each path — for example Approve → a payment, Reject → a Slack message to #accounts with the reason, No answer → an email reminder to Rohan Mehta.

Output

The question is asked once per run, with the first item's values. Every item goes down the path the answer takes, each carrying these fields on top of its own:

With Everyone, answer, answeredBy and the rest are the deciding answer's — the first Reject or No, or the last Approve or Yes.

What happens next

• The run waits. The step shows Waiting for an answer, and the run's page says This run is waiting, not stuck. It carries on as soon as someone answers, or down No answer if nobody does in time. Waiting runs do not use your monthly allowance while they sit.
• Each person is asked on their first channel first — the Bizomate app unless they chose otherwise, which means their Requests page and a notice under the bell. If they have not answered within Try the next channel after, the question goes to their next channel. A channel they have not linked is skipped. See Choose where you answer requests. The run lists each try — see If a request goes unanswered or cannot be delivered.
• With Any one of them, the first answer wins. The request closes for everyone else, and its page says Already answered — …, by … in … at ….
• With Everyone, each person's answer is recorded as they give it, and the others are still asked. The first Reject or No ends the step down that path at once; it goes down Approve or Yes only when everyone has given it.
• An answer cannot be changed once it is given — the run has already gone on.
• The run carries on down that answer's path. If nobody answers within If nobody answers in, it goes down No answer.

Good to know

• Up to 10 answers, plus Reply in words, and No answer is always there. The Bizomate app, Slack, Telegram and email show up to 10 answers, Microsoft Teams up to 6. Each answer is a path on the canvas, beside No answer. An answer that needs a reason opens Bizomate instead. So does one over the amount, except on Slack and Teams, which prove who is answering.
• Labels are at most 20 characters, and no two answers can share one.
• "The person who started the run" is whoever started it by hand or with a test. For a run a trigger started, it is the person who published the version that runs.
• Someone named twice is asked once — for example by name and as the person who started the run.
• From an answer's Confirm in Bizomate from up — at that amount or more — the person confirms on the request's page with their passkey, or their authenticator code if they have no passkey. Amounts are shown in your company's currency.
• Ask a person cannot sit inside Loop Over Items. It asks once for the whole run, so put it after the loop. See Repeat steps for each item with Loop Over Items.
• Test it with a test run of the workflow, not Run this step. A request in a test still goes to the real people you ask. A test has 5 minutes in all, waits included: if nobody answers within five minutes of starting it, the test stops with This test run stopped after 5 minutes. See Testing a workflow before you publish it.
• If the step runs again in the same run — after Try again, say — it asks afresh.
• An item's own field with the same name as one of the output fields, such as answer, is replaced by the step's.
• The Bizomate app, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram and email are unlimited. Texts come out of the company's monthly message allowance: none on Free, 100 on Starter, 500 on Pro, and by contract on Enterprise. WhatsApp and RCS will draw on it too. SMS shows up to 9 answers, numbered for a reply.

If something goes wrong

Related

• Answer a request
• Choose where you answer requests
• If a request goes unanswered or cannot be delivered
• Send items down named paths with Switch
• Pause a run with Wait
• Fix steps marked Needs setup