Approvals for Document Changes

[Tyler Ford]

Hello,

I am wondering how users/admins are handling documents that you want to have approved before the final version is submitted? We have many policies that adhere to various compliance standards that I would want to go through an approval workflow and then have that approval documented within the document being approved. Is there an addon that achieves this or some workflow within Confluence?

[Yvonne Sims]

That’s a very common requirement for policies and compliance content in Confluence.

If you want pages to be approved before they’re considered final, with that approval clearly documented, an app is usually the best approach. Confluence’s built-in options are quite limited here.

Aura Workflows is a good fit for this use case:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1237745/aura-workflow-approval-for-confluence-page-publishing

 It lets you:

• Set up clear approval steps (draft → review → approved)

• Require one or more approvers before publishing

• Prevent publishing until approval is complete

• Automatically record who approved and when

• Show the approval status directly on the page (helpful for audits)

 This way, policies go through a defined review process, and the approval is always visible and traceable.

 If you’d like, I can share a simple example workflow for policy or compliance approvals. 

[Kris Klima _K15t_]

Hi @Tyler Ford 

On top of what @Mikael Sandberg mentioned, there are these apps.

• Workflows for Confluence by Appfox
• Capable for Confluence by Capable
• Breeze by B1nary

Back in the day I tested them all and they'd all work in your environment. Each takes a slightly different approach to workflows and approvals, and comes with its own set of extra features, so one or the other may resonate better with your specific environment.

But they're all easy to set up and vendors are great to work with.

Method 2

A different method would be using a two-space approach. More on this in my Community article, but TL:DR is that you have one space (Source) where authoring and approving takes place and another space (Target) to which you synchronize the content. The idea is that only a selected few have access to Source, while Target is read-only for a wide audience.

The apps that I mention above actually can combine approval workflows with the two-space approach so you can have a really watertight control over both workflows and who can access what and when.

Method 3

If you want to deploy workflows on a SPACE level and create trackable versions of your documentation, there's Scroll Documents by K15t. Basically, once you approve content in the entire space, you can create a snapshot of it (think 'virtual space') and publish it to another space as a version. (This can be useful if you need to, for example, keep your documentation versions for audit purposes).

Method 4

And, of course, you can mix and match the native Confluence approach that @Danno recommended with the apps that I mentioned :) 

Disclaimer: I work for K15t, maker of Scroll Documents.

[Danno]

@Kris Klima _K15t_ I would love to have access to add-ons like yours and given your disclaimer and acceptance of that need for some people, your company will be one I will follow up on if I am ever given the budget to do so.

I'm not a professional programmer, but I've had to do a whole bunch of DIY workarounds. I like to pitch the homegrown, especially if I have already done it before. I offered up the link as one way to accomplish this since it was already out there. I think I need to be writing up my own versions and publishing them in the community. 🤔🤣

[Kris Klima _K15t_]

@Danno , thanks! 

I had been deploying and configuring our apps long before I joined K15t, often using them in a way they never intended :D LIke creating workflows using apps from different vendors which I do mention... 

First and foremost, this is about helping Community members and expand their knowledge. These days, there tend to be alternative apps for many use cases. But there are still scenarios where there's literally just one app.

Having said that, there's a LOT to explore on stock Confluence, though, especially as it ventures beyond pages. 

Whiteboards, databases (which, btw, starter life as a K15t app :) ), automation with statuses and other Confluence/Jira data, brings it close to creating 'meta apps' with no-code approach. And that's before Rovo comes into mix.

By all means, do publish your workarounds, hacks, etc. here. I've been doing this for a couple of years and it's been great fun and audiences here do appreciate them.

Not all can users have access to all the apps, etc. But any new solution for any issue will always find someone who will find it useful.

[Mikael Sandberg]

Hi @Tyler Ford,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

I have used Comala Document Control and Comala Publishing in the past for this. Currently I have created our own process were you from within Confluence can start the review process, this will create a ticket in JSM, and once approved automations will copy the page to an external space that is linked to JSM. It will also link the external page to the internal. 

[Tyler Ford]

Can you provide details on this automation you are using? That might be ideal with my organization.

[Mikael Sandberg]

So the automation in Confluence is making a web request to an automation in JSM that creates the ticket and adds information about the page, like the title, page Id. I also have a Rovo agent that generates a summary and keywords that is added to the ticket. Then it is up to the user to fill out who should approve, and once the form is submitted it goes to an approval status. Once approved, the information collected in the ticket is stored in Assets. Then I have an automation in JSM that adds a comment on the page, this triggers an automation in Confluence to copy the page to the external space, then it will call back to JSM to trigger another automation that will link the external page to the internal page by adding a banner on the internal page, and then update the object with the page Id and URL for the external page.

I am also reusing a lot of these automations for the process of updating the page, the only difference from the initial publish is that I remove the external page and then create a new one.

[Mikael Sandberg]

All in all I have ~30 automations on the JSM side, most of them do specific tasks like adding the banner to the internal page, and then I have a couple that acts as dispatchers and calling the specific automations based on what is needed.

[Matteo Gubellini _SoftComply_]

SoftComply Document Manager for stricter controls, depending on what standards you need to comply to. Ours focuses on MedTech industry and adjacent ones.

Matteo

[Danno]

@Tyler Ford if you are limited in purchasing add-ons you can try creating your own. Here is a walk through.

Restrict who can Approve Pages in Confluence CliffsNotes Edition 469