What Is the Approval Workflow?
Getting a class specification finalized usually means getting sign-off from more than one person. HR needs to weigh in, a department head needs to approve, legal might need to review specific language, and a subject matter expert needs to confirm the technical details are right. Doing this over email means chasing down responses, losing track of which version someone commented on, and reconciling feedback from five different inboxes.
Holly's approval workflow moves that entire process into the platform. You define who needs to review a specification and in what order, everyone leaves feedback in the same place, and you can see at a glance who's finished and who hasn't. When every reviewer has weighed in, you can set the version to a "Published" status.
Key Terms You'll See Throughout
A few terms come up across every part of the approval workflow. Getting familiar with them here will make the rest of the process easier to follow.
Document Owner — The person responsible for the specification. They configure the workflow, manage reviewers, decide what feedback to incorporate, and have final authority to publish.
Stages — The major phases of your review process. Stages run one after another. HR review might be Stage 1, and Legal review might be Stage 2, meaning Legal doesn't start until HR is done.
Steps — The individual review assignments inside a stage. Steps in the same stage run in parallel, so if a stage has three steps, all three groups of reviewers get notified and can work at the same time.
Internal Reviewer — Someone with a Holly account. They review the specification, leave comments and suggestions, and can see the workflow timeline.
External Reviewer — Someone without a Holly account, such as a department head at another agency or an outside subject matter expert. They review and leave feedback through an emailed link, but don't have access to the rest of the Holly platform or the full workflow timeline.
How the Workflow Moves From Draft to Published
At a high level, every approval workflow follows the same four phases. Each phase has its own article if you want the full walkthrough.
Set up the workflow. Starting from a specification in Draft status, the document owner builds out the stages and steps, decides whether each stage advances manually or automatically, and assigns reviewers (internal or external). See Building an Approval Workflow for the full setup process.
Manage the workflow while it's active. Once launched, the document owner tracks reviewer progress, sends reminders, and can adjust reviewers or stages as circumstances change. See Managing an Active Approval Workflow.
Review and leave feedback. Reviewers read the specification, add comments, and suggest specific edits, then mark their review complete. The process is the same whether you're reviewing as an internal Holly user or as an external reviewer following an email link, though the two experiences differ slightly. See Reviewing a Specification or, if you're an outside reviewer without a Holly account, How to Review a Class Spec as an External Reviewer to the Holly Platform.
Address feedback and publish. Once all reviewers in a stage or across the whole workflow have submitted, the document owner works through the comments and suggestions, decides what to incorporate, and publishes the final specification. See Reviewing Feedback and Publishing.
Note: You don't need to wait until a stage finishes to start looking at feedback. Document owners can read and respond to comments as they come in throughout the review process.
Where to Start
If you're setting up a review process for the first time, start with How to Set Up an Approval Workflow. If you've already got a workflow running and need to track progress or make adjustments, go to How to Manage an Active Approval Workflow. And if someone just sent you a specification to review, How to Review a Specification as a Holly User will walk you through it.