Document approval

With approval on, new documents and changes from most people wait for an approver before anyone else sees them. The approver can see exactly what changed, then approve it or ask for changes.

#Turn it on

In Admin → General → Documentation approval, choose which documents need approval:

• Knowledge Base articles (the default)
• Client documents
• Knowledge Base articles and client documents
• None: everything is published straight away.

#Who approves

Anyone whose role has Approve documentation. Admins have it. To let others approve, add it to their role in Admin → Roles.

People who can approve publish their own documents and changes straight away. Everyone else's wait for approval.

#Sending a document for approval

Write or edit a document as usual. When approval applies, the button reads Submit for approval. You can add a note for the approver, such as what changed and why.

• A new document isn't published until it's approved. Only you and the approvers can see it. It shows under Not published yet on the documents list, and you can keep editing it.
• A change to a document leaves the current version as it is. The document's page tells you your change is waiting, and Keep editing picks up where you left off, so you're always working on one change, not several.
• Restoring an earlier version from a document's history is a change too, so it waits as well.

Documents written with Knowa, from a ticket, from a blind spot or in the browser extension work the same way. Once a document written from a ticket is approved, it's related to the ticket's assets, and on a HaloPSA ticket a private note links to it, just as if it had been saved straight away.

#Approving

Approvers are told in their 🔔 inbox, and Approvals lists everything waiting for them (Waiting for me). The documents list shows how many are waiting there too.

Open one to review it:

• For a change, What changed shows the lines removed (red) and added (green), plus any change to the title or folder. How it will read shows the finished document. If someone changed the document after the change was written, you're warned: approving replaces their version, which is kept in the document's history.
• For a new document, you see the whole document.

Then:

• Approve and publish, with an optional note. The author is told, and the change is published. The version it replaces is kept in the history.
• Request changes, saying what needs to change. The author is told, edits it and submits it again.

#Withdrawing

The author can Withdraw a document or change that hasn't been approved yet. Nothing is published.

#What's not reviewed

Approval covers documents people write in Knowpoint, in the browser extension, with Knowa and through the MCP server. Imports, migrations, integrations that sync articles (such as the HaloPSA knowledge base) and the REST API publish directly, since they're set up by admins. Deleting a document doesn't need approval; it needs the delete permission as before.