Approvals — Waiting for you
A small set of changes don’t run on the requester’s confirmation. They queue, and a different person holding the matching permission has to approve them.
What this does
Section titled “What this does”This is a four-eyes control: the person who asks for a change and the person who approves it must be two different people. Publishing and archiving a program go through it, because both are visible to every enrolled learner the moment they take effect.
The queue lives at Waiting for you (/dashboard/assistant/approvals), reached from the assistant panel:
These are held, not applied. Nothing runs until someone other than the requester approves it — which is the point, so you won’t see your own requests in the waiting list. You can still withdraw your own from below.
Two groups:
- Waiting for you — requests someone else raised that you can decide.
- Already decided — what happened to the rest: Approved and applied, Withdrawn before it ran, Rejected, Expired without a decision.
Approve or reject a request
Section titled “Approve or reject a request”- Open the assistant and go to Waiting for you, or open
/dashboard/assistant/approvals. - Read the request. Each says “Someone asked the assistant to do this. It needs a second person to approve before it runs.”
- Choose Approve to run it, or leave it and it eventually expires.
You will never see your own requests in the waiting list — the database itself refuses an approval where the requester and the approver are the same person, so hiding them is honest rather than cosmetic.
Withdraw your own request
Section titled “Withdraw your own request”Your own pending requests appear below the waiting list with Withdraw. Withdrawing cancels it before it runs; it then shows as Withdrawn before it ran under Already decided.
If nobody else can approve
Section titled “If nobody else can approve”Small organizations can have only one person holding the necessary permission, which would leave a request stuck forever. So a request that no second person could approve auto-approves 48 hours after it was raised. The card says “Auto-approves if no second admin is available.”
That is a delay, not an instant fallback. If you need the change now, either have a second permitted person approve it, or make the change directly on the program rather than through the assistant.
Reference
Section titled “Reference”| Thing | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| What needs four eyes | Publishing a program · archiving a program |
| Who can approve | Anyone holding the permission the change itself requires — except the requester |
| Which permission | Derived on the server from the requested action, never chosen by the browser |
| Auto-approval | 48 hours after the request, only when no second approver is available |
| Withdrawal | The requester, any time before it runs |
| Break-glass transcript export | Also four-eyes, and needs permission to update the organization |
The permission a request needs is decided server-side from the action itself. A request whose claimed permission doesn’t match its action is refused outright.
Troubleshooting
Section titled “Troubleshooting”I asked the assistant to publish a program and nothing happened. It queued. Look for Waiting for a second approver on the card, or open Waiting for you. Nothing has changed on the program yet.
My own request isn’t in the waiting list. By design — you can’t approve your own. It’s below the list, with Withdraw.
The waiting list is empty but a colleague says they raised something. You don’t hold the permission that change requires, so the request isn’t yours to decide. Ask someone who does.
A request expired. Nobody decided it in time. Raise it again, or make the change directly.
I’m the only administrator here. Your requests auto-approve after 48 hours. For anything urgent, make the change on the program itself rather than through the assistant.