Product Guides•stable•Updated 2026-05-15

Guardrails — Approval Chains

Manage reusable approval workflow templates and preview resolved approvers.

What this page is for

Approval Chains lets admins define reusable approval templates without forcing users to edit raw JSON for every case. It supports draft editing, publishing, duplication, archiving, and approver resolution preview.

Who uses it

  • Admins
  • Security owners
  • Platform governance teams

What you see

  • Templates with name, chain key, trigger type, scope, status, enabled state, version, updatedAt, step count, and description.
  • Filters for search, status, and trigger type.
  • Detail sheet with template metadata, SLA policy, creator, publisher, publishedAt, updatedAt, conditions JSON, metadata JSON, and step details.
  • Preview sheet showing resolved approvers, step warnings, escalation, and escalation approvers.

What you can do

  • Create or edit a draft.
  • Add, remove, and reorder steps.
  • Publish a draft.
  • Duplicate a template into a draft.
  • Archive a template.
  • Preview resolved approvers using a requester, reference date, and scope context.

Permissions and safety

  • Workflow lifecycle actions require governance admin permissions.
  • Published workflow changes should be auditable.
  • Preview does not mutate the template.

Operational notes

  • Top-level and step-level metadataJson and conditionsJson are supported.
  • Preview context can include project, team, cost center, feature, customer, tenant, workflow, agent, provider, and model.

What this page is not for

  • Making individual approval decisions.
  • Creating exceptions directly.
  • Replacing policy configuration.

Recommended workflow

  1. Confirm that you are in the right workspace and environment.
  2. Use filters before changing configuration or interpreting results.
  3. Open the detail drawer when available.
  4. Check related objects such as alerts, approvals, costs, policies, runs, deliveries, or audit entries.
  5. Apply changes only when the impact is clear.
  6. Re-check the page after the backend refreshes.
  7. Export or copy IDs when you need to escalate.

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