Build a workflow with an approval

A workflow with an approval is the shape you reach for when the work has a draft, a decision, and an action — and you want a human between the draft and the action. The approval gate pauses the run until someone clicks Approve; the next step only fires on a green light. This walk builds a daily-summary workflow with a one-step approval gate on a fresh org.

You need an Editor role and one agent that produces a draft (the first useful agent from Build your first agent works fine). The conceptual side lives in Automation concepts and Approval concepts; this walk is the end-to-end mechanic.

Before you begin

Confirm three things. Your role is at least Editor — workflow editing is gated to Editor and above. You have a draft-producing agent ready to call; without it, Step 2 of the workflow has nothing to invoke. You are a member of the approver pool you will assign in Step 3, or you have a teammate ready to approve so the run actually progresses.

Step 1 — Create the workflow shell

The first move is the workflow definition — the ordered container the steps live in. Open Automations > New workflow and set:

• Name — Daily inbox summary
• Trigger — Manual for now; you can swap it for a schedule once the run works
• Inputs — leave empty

Save as a draft. The shell exists but has no steps; running it now would return immediately.

Step 2 — Add the draft step

The draft step is the agent invocation. Click Add step > Call agent and configure:

• Agent — the draft-producing agent you have ready
• Prompt — Summarise yesterday's unread customer messages into a paragraph and propose a single team-wide reply.
• Output variable — draft

Save. The workflow now has one step; running it produces a draft variable but does nothing with it.

Step 3 — Add the approval gate

The approval gate is the seam between the agent's draft and the action. Click Add step > Approval gate and configure:

• Title — Review daily summary
• Body — {{ draft }} so the approver sees the full text in the card
• Approver pool — a team or an explicit list of users you are part of
• Timeout — 30 minutes, escalate to fail

Save. Running the workflow now pauses on this step and waits for a decision; rejecting ends the run.

Step 4 — Add the action step and run it

The action step runs only when the gate resolves Approve. Click Add step > Send mail (or any action your org has wired) and configure:

• To — your own address for this walk
• Subject — Daily inbox summary
• Body — {{ draft }}

Save and Publish the workflow. Click Run. The draft step fires; the approval gate appears as a card in your inbox; click Approve; the mail step fires; the run completes. The execution view shows three rows — draft, gate decision, mail — with timestamps and the actor on the gate.

Where this fits

Three steps with one gate is the smallest useful workflow-with-approval: agent drafts, human decides, system acts. The same shape scales — swap manual for a schedule trigger, add a second gate before a destructive step, branch on the decision instead of failing on Reject.

For the gate's state machine and routing rules, see Approvals in workflows. For the four pieces every workflow is made of, see Automation concepts.