Use case · Approvals
Approval workflows for requests, applications and timesheets
A request comes in through a form, waits for the right person to approve it, and only then moves on. Matiks holds each run at the approval step for as long as it takes, and a rejection stops it.
Approvals that live in an inbox get lost
Purchase requests, time-off requests, applications, timesheets, expense claims — most organisations approve them by email. The request arrives, somebody forwards it, the approver replies "fine" from their phone, and whoever has to act on it goes looking for that reply a week later. Nothing records what was decided, and nothing stops a request from going ahead without a decision at all.
A trigger, the steps, and a hold for a person
A workflow in Matiks is a trigger followed by steps, in order, built on a canvas. The trigger is usually a form submission; it can also be a record added to a list, or a schedule. Then you add the steps: send an email, notify the team, wait, take a branch depending on the answers — and an Approval block, which holds the run until a person approves or rejects it.
An approval has no deadline, so a run waits as long as it takes rather than timing out into a decision nobody made. Approve it and the run carries on to the next step. Reject it and the run stops: nothing after a refused approval ever happens.
What an approval workflow usually looks like
Most approval flows are the same shape with different words in them:
- A request form collects what the approver needs to decide: the amount, the dates, the reason, a file.
- An If block routes the run — small requests one way, large ones to a second approver.
- An Approval block holds the run for the person who decides.
- Once approved, an email confirms it to the requester and passes it on to whoever acts on it.
- If the request needs a document, a Fill a PDF step produces it — only for the approved ones.
Start from a template that already works
Workflows come with templates that arrive built and deliberately unfinished: each one lists what you still have to fill in. The timesheet template is an approval flow on a schedule. On the 15th and the last day of each month it emails a reminder to fill in the timesheet, holds for the approver’s decision, and only once approved sends the newest timesheet in your folder on to accounting. A rejection stops it, so nothing reaches accounting that nobody signed off.
Safe to let it run
A run is a list of steps with a result on each, so you can see exactly what a workflow did with a request. A workflow can only touch what the person it runs as could touch. Workflows are edited as a draft and take effect when you publish them, so a half-built flow never fires — and turning one off is a single switch.
The request stays on the record
Because the request came in through a form, the requester is a record in your workspace with the request attached. Emails the workflow sends land on the same record. Lists can carry a stage column for requests that go through more than one round, and the filled document, if there is one, sits on the response beside the answers.
Read more about workflows
Put the decision in the flow.
Build a request form, add an approval step, and nothing goes ahead until somebody says yes.