The Approval Flow module, also called Workflow Management, helps your organization manage requests through a clear and structured approval process.
With Office-X, you can create approval flows that match your organization’s needs from simple one-step approvals to multi-step approval chains. This makes sure each request goes to the right person and follows the correct approval process.
You can create approval flows for these four request types:
- Leave Requests
- Bill Approvals
- Purchase Requests
- Travel Requests
Video Guide #
You can watch the video guide here:
What You Can Do #
With Approval Flow, you can:
- Create approval workflows for different request types.
- Define who the approval flow applies to.
- Define who should be excluded from the flow.
- Configure step-by-step approval hierarchy.
- Assign approvers dynamically.
- Send in-app notifications and emails to approvers.
- Send requests automatically across multiple approval levels.
- Allow selected Leave Request approvers to cancel already approved leave when required.
Supported Features #
You can create approval flows for:
- Leave Requests – Employee leave applications.
- Bill Approval – Bill or payment approvals.
- Purchase Requests – Purchase order approvals.
- Travel Requests – Travel expense approvals.
Note: The Can Cancel Approved Leave option is available only when the selected feature is Leave Request.
Who Can Use This Feature #
Subscriber Admin can create, view, edit, and delete approval flows for their company.
Good to know: unlike most other features in Office-X, Approval Flow has no delegable permission at all — there’s nothing to grant here from Admin → Permission, not even View-only. Regular employees can never access Admin → Approval Flow; managing approval flows is Subscriber Admin only.
Access Approval Flow #
To open Approval Flow:
- Log in to Office-X.
- Go to Admin.
- Open Approval Flow.
- Click Add New Flow to create a new approval workflow.
Navigation path: Admin → Approval Flow → Add New Flow
How the Approval Flow Works #
Creating an approval flow follows a guided 5-step process:
- Select Feature
- Applicability
- Exceptions
- Approval Steps
- Review & Create
Step 1: Select Feature #
In this step, select the request type for which you want to create the approval flow, and give the flow a name.
Available features:
- Leave Requests
- Bill Approval
- Purchase Requests
- Travel Requests
Only one feature can be selected per approval flow, and both the feature and a flow name are required before you can continue.
Step 2: Applicability #
In this step, define who this approval flow applies to.
You can apply the flow based on:
- Gender
- Department
- Designation
- Team
- Individual Employee
Important:
- Only one flow is used: If an employee matches more than one active flow for the same request type, Office-X uses the first matching flow it finds.
- At least one applicability rule is required: You must set at least one rule before you can continue or save the flow. A flow with no rules would never match any employee’s requests, so it would have no effect.
So please plan your flows carefully before you create them. The safest habit is to make sure two active flows for the same request type can never cover the same person:
- Keep each flow’s applicability rules separate — for example one flow for the Sales department and one for Support, not one for “Sales” and another for “all employees”.
- If two flows do need to overlap, use the Exceptions step (Step 3) on one of them to push the shared people out, so only one flow is left covering them.
- Keep only one broad catch-all flow active for each request type. Make your other flows more specific, and exclude those employees from the catch-all flow.
- Set a flow to Inactive instead of leaving two competing flows switched on. An inactive flow is skipped completely when matching new requests.
If approvals ever go to the wrong person, this overlap is the first thing to check: open Admin → Approval Flow, filter by that request type, and look for two Active flows whose applicability covers the same employee.
Step 3: Exceptions #
In this step, define who should be excluded from the approval flow. This step is entirely optional.
Exception types available (the same five as Applicability):
- Gender
- Department
- Designation
- Team
- Employee
If a user matches both Applicability and Exceptions, the Exception rule takes priority — they are excluded from the flow entirely, regardless of how they match Applicability.
Step 4: Approval Steps #
In this step, define the approval hierarchy step by step. At least one approval step is required before you can finish.
Each approval step includes:
- Step Name
- Approver Type
- Notification settings
- Email settings
- Leave cancellation eligibility, only for Leave Request flows
Add Step Name #
Enter a clear step name that explains the purpose of the approval step. This is required.
Select Approver Type #
You can select who will approve the request in each step. Available approver types:
Approver Types
- Select Employees: Search and manually choose one or more employees as approvers for this step.
- Reporting Manager: Select this option when the requester’s direct Reporting Manager should approve the request. When selected, Office-X automatically routes the request to the requester’s Reporting Manager.
- Company Admin: Select this option when the company-level admin should approve the request.
These three options are mutually exclusive — choosing one hides the other two for that step. Selecting Reporting Manager or Company Admin clears out any employees you’d already picked, and picking any employee clears out Reporting Manager/Company Admin. Exactly one approver type must be set per step before you can save it.
Send Notification #
Enable Send Notification when you want the approver to receive an in-app notification for the approval request.
If enabled:
- The approver receives an in-app notification.
- The notification helps the approver quickly identify pending approval work.
Send Email #
Enable Send Email when you want the approver to receive an email notification for the approval request.
If enabled:
- The approver receives an email about the request.
- The email helps ensure the approver is informed even when they are not actively using the system.
Can Cancel Approved Leave #
The Can Cancel Approved Leave option appears only when the selected feature is Leave Request.
This option allows approvers in that specific approval step to cancel a leave request after it has already been approved.
Enable this option when the approver in the step should have authority to cancel approved leave.
If this option is disabled, approvers in that step can approve or reject the leave request based on the normal approval process, but they cannot cancel an already approved leave.
Important Notes
- This option is available only for Leave Request approval flows.
- This option does not appear for Bill Approval, Purchase Requests, or Travel Requests.
- The option applies only to the approver or approvers configured in that specific step.
- A user must still be an eligible approver for that step to cancel approved leave.
Multi-Step Approval Flow #
You can add one or multiple approval steps. Approval steps are executed sequentially. A request moves to the next step only after the current step is approved.
Good to know: Once a flow has pending requests, you can’t add or remove steps. This keeps the approval process stable for requests that are already in progress.
You can still edit existing steps, such as the approver type, step name, or notification/email settings, even when requests are pending. See Edit Approval Flow below for how these changes affect in-progress requests.
How a Request Actually Moves Through a Flow #
Steps 1–4 above are all about building the flow. Here’s what actually happens once it’s live and a real request comes in — walked through with a concrete example, so it’s clear how Applicability, Exceptions, and your approval steps all work together in practice.
Example setup: a flow named “Casual Leave Approval,” Feature = Leave Requests, Applicability = Department “Sales,” no Exceptions, and two steps:
- Step 1 — “Manager Review”: Approver Type = Reporting Manager, Send Notification = on, Send Email = off.
- Step 2 — “Final Sign-off”: Approver Type = Company Admin, Send Notification = on, Send Email = on.
What happens when Maria, a Sales department employee, submits a Casual Leave request:
- Because Maria is in Sales and nothing excludes her, this is the flow that governs her request. (If an Exception rule on this flow had matched her, this flow would not apply to her at all. And if she also matched another active Leave flow, only one of the two would run — the first one Office-X finds — which is why overlapping flows are worth avoiding; see Steps 2–3 above.)
- The request is saved as Pending, with a two-step checklist attached to it — both steps starting out as “Pending.”
- Only Step 1’s approver — Maria’s Reporting Manager — is notified, and only in-app (Send Email is off for this step). The Company Admin in Step 2 hears nothing yet; it isn’t their turn.
- Maria’s manager clicks Approve. This only marks Step 1 as approved — the request is still Pending overall, now sitting at Step 2.
- The Company Admin is now notified — both in-app and by email, since both are enabled for this step.
- The Company Admin clicks Approve. Since this is the last step, the request’s overall status finally becomes Approved, and Maria is notified that her leave is confirmed.
What if Step 1 had rejected instead? If Maria’s manager had clicked Reject at Step 1, the request’s status would have become Rejected immediately — Step 2 would never be reached, the Company Admin would never be notified, and Maria would be told right away that her request was rejected. A rejection at any step ends the whole request; it doesn’t need every step to weigh in.
A few things worth knowing about how this plays out in less straightforward cases:
- If Maria didn’t have a Reporting Manager assigned, Step 1 would automatically fall to the Subscriber Admin instead — a request never gets stuck just because a Reporting Manager step has nobody to route to.
- The Subscriber Admin can always step in and act on whichever step is currently pending on any request, even without being personally named as that step’s approver — but this only resolves that one step, it doesn’t skip ahead or finalize the whole request early. A 2-step flow still needs both steps actioned, whether by their assigned approvers or by the Subscriber Admin standing in.
- If Maria’s request hadn’t matched any approval flow at all (say, no flow covers her department), it would still be created as Pending, but with no step checklist — it would simply wait on the Subscriber Admin, and only the Subscriber Admin could act on it.
The exact same mechanics apply to Bill, Purchase, and Travel Request flows — only the request type changes, not how steps, notifications, or approval/rejection behave. See the Approve & Reject guide for each feature for more on the approver’s side of this process.
Step 5: Review & Create #
Before saving the approval flow, the system displays a full summary.
The summary includes:
- Selected feature
- Applicability rules
- Exception rules
- Approval steps
- Approver types
- Notification settings
- Email settings
- Can Cancel Approved Leave setting, if the feature is Leave Request
Review the details carefully before creating the approval flow.
Click Create Approval Flow to save the workflow.
After Creating an Approval Flow #
After an approval flow is created, it appears in the Approval Flow list.
From the list, authorized users can:
- View workflow details
- Edit workflow rules or steps
- Set the flow Active or Inactive
- Delete the approval flow
Each flow in the list also shows a Status column — Active or Inactive.
Activate / Deactivate Approval Flow #
From a flow’s action menu, click Set Inactive (or Set Active to turn it back on). An inactive flow is skipped entirely when matching new requests — it behaves as if it doesn’t exist for anyone submitting a new request, even if its applicability rules would otherwise cover them.
Good to know: When you save changes to a flow’s approvers, Office-X automatically notifies the affected people.
- Removed approvers receive a “Removed as an approver” notification.
- New approvers receive an “Added as an approver” notification.
Important:
- You can reactivate a flow at any time. There are no pending-request restrictions when changing an inactive flow back to Active.
- You can’t deactivate a flow while it has pending requests. Those requests need the flow to continue processing. Approve or reject all pending requests first, then you can deactivate the flow.
Delete Approval Flow #
Use Delete to remove an approval flow when it is no longer needed. Clicking it opens a confirmation dialog: “Are you sure you want to delete this approval flow? This action cannot be undone.”
Important: a flow can only be deleted if it has never been used by a single request — not just “no pending requests,” but no request of any status (approved, rejected, whatever) has ever pointed to it. If it has, deletion is blocked entirely with: “This approval flow is already in use in {Feature}, so it can’t be deleted.” In practice, this means once a flow has processed even one request, it can never be deleted — only deactivated (see above) or edited. Genuinely unused flows (created but never actually matched to a submitted request) delete immediately once confirmed, with no further check.
