Supported editions for this feature: Business Standard and Business Plus; Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus; Education Plus; Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, and Enterprise Essentials Plus; G Suite Business. Compare your edition
Users can send documents in Google Drive through a formal approval process. Reviewers can approve, reject, or leave feedback on the documents directly within Drive, Docs, and other Google Workspace editors. You can use this process to get approval on a contract or new hire, approve changes for a document before publication, or other formal approval situations.
How it works
When a user sends a document for approval, approvers get email or Drive notifications about the request. If the user sets a due date, reviewers get email reminders that their approval is needed or past due. Users decide whether Editors are able to edit the content, leave comments or make suggestions on the document by selecting to lock the document or not. By default, documents are unlocked.
Approvers follow a link to the document where they can review, leave comments, and reject or approve the document. If a user requests approvals from multiple people, the document is approved once all reviewers approve the file. If an edit is made, all reviewers need to re-approve the latest version of the file. The file is rejected if a single reviewer rejects the file.
When all reviewers approve the document, the file will be locked. Locked files can't be edited until they're unlocked. Unlocking the file doesn't cancel the current approval request.
For more details, see Get approvals on files in Google Drive.
Control Approvals
As an administrator, you can control how your users and files take part in the approval process.
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Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
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In the Admin console, go to Menu
Apps
Google Workspace
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Click Approvals.
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(Optional) To apply the setting only to some users, at the side, select an organizational unit (often used for departments) or configuration group (advanced). Show me how
Group settings override organizational units. Learn more
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To let users outside of the organization approve documents owned by the organization, under Allow approval requests on files owned by your organization, click On.
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To let users request approvals on files from outside of the organization, under Allow users in your organization to request approvals on files, click On.
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Click Save. Or, you might click Override for an organizational unit.
To later restore the inherited value, click Inherit (or Unset for a group).
