Approval workflows rework

Planable · Lead Product Designer · Jan–Mar 2026

Awaiting approval15

Sample post: an orange and a pineapple top on purple.

Sample post: sliced fruit in a row on pink.

Sample post: mango and pineapple on blue.

Feedback left3

Sample post: blueberries and mint on lilac.

Approved1

My Approvals, the client view.

I led discovery and helped design the solution. Most approval requests went nowhere. We found one root cause and shipped four features to fix it.

-41%
Time to complete: +36%
Adoption: +50%
Conversion

Problem

Agencies attached approval requests to very few posts, and fewer still were completed. Only 16% of requests were approved within 5 days.

The broken loop.

A client gets the approval email and doesn't act on it right away. After that, there is no way back to it. The post stays pending, and the agency team doesn't know why.

So teams worked around it. Some asked for sign-off on WhatsApp. Some turned approvals off. Once approvals happen outside the product, people have less reason to open it.

Colleague: Did you get the sign-off from
John for the Instagram posts?
9:43 AM
Me: I requested approval via Planable about 2 days ago, and I'm not sure why it's taking so long. I'll ping him on WhatsApp. 🥲
9:43 AM
Colleague: Should we set this as the default
for John? 🤔
9:44 AM
Me: Great, one more thing to take care 😤😤😤
9:44 AM

What we designed

Email nudges and one-click approvals

Clients with a pending approval now get two reminders: one 48 hours after the request, and one a day before the post is due to publish. The person who made the post can get them too, and who gets reminded is a workspace setting. We redesigned the email so it shows the post and asks for one thing.

Reminder setting. It can be set per brand, client or workspace.

Client portal

Clients get one page with every post waiting for them, and they can filter it. Before, all they had were separate notifications.

Awaiting approval

Feedback left

Approved

Every post in the portal is in one of three states. Try it on the board at the top.

Approval view

On the phone, clients swipe through the posts waiting for them, without jumping between screens. Making the review step quicker was the biggest thing we could change, so this view does only that.

Review mode. Swipe right to approve, left to skip, or use the buttons.

Bulk approval requests

Agency users can select multiple posts from the calendar and send requests in one action. Before, this meant post-by-post requests, so it rarely happened at scale.

Bulk requests. The drafts are already picked. Change the picks, then send them in one go.

Results

Agencies can now ask for approval on many posts at once. Clients can always find what is waiting for them.

Here is what moved each number.

Email nudges

Approval view

Client portal

Bulk requests

-41%Time to completeRequests sorted faster

+50%ConversionApprovals resolved in the app

+36%AdoptionMore users send requests

Each feature and the number it moved.

Lessons

We only saw the problem when we looked at what clients did after the email. The WhatsApp workaround told us the most. Teams weren't doing it wrong. Our process was harder than sending a message.

Four features sounds like a lot. Each one closes one gap, and if you take one away that gap is still there. The numbers improved. The better sign is that teams stopped working around the product.

Team Cristian Jigău, Dana Siminițchi, Florin Palamarciuc, Marius Adauge, Nicolae Sîrcu, Timofei Pendus, Vlad Fussa

Thanks for reading. Full work history in my resume. If you'd like to chat, email me or book a 15-min call.

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