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Rerouting Approvals

Rerouting lets you reassign pending documents to new approval chains based on your current policies. This is useful when you have updated a policy and want existing documents to follow the new rules, or when documents were routed to the wrong approver.

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Only Admin and Manager roles can reroute approvals.

When to Reroute​

Common scenarios where rerouting is the right choice:

  • You updated an approval policy and want documents that are currently pending to use the new version of the policy.
  • Documents were routed to the wrong approver due to a policy misconfiguration that has since been corrected.
  • An approver left the organization and their pending documents need to be reassigned.
  • Organizational changes mean different people should now approve certain documents.

How to Reroute​

  1. Go to Approvals in the left sidebar.
  2. Select the documents that need rerouting. You can select individual documents or use the checkbox to select multiple at once.
  3. Click Reroute.
  4. Review the confirmation dialog, which explains what will happen.
  5. Confirm the action.

When you confirm:

  • The old approval chains on the selected documents are cancelled.
  • New approval chains are created based on the current policies.
  • Documents enter the new approval chain at Step 1.

What Happens to Existing Approvals​

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Rerouting cancels existing approval progress. Any approvals already given on the old chain will need to be re-done under the new chain.

This is an important point: rerouting is not a minor adjustment. If a document was on Step 3 of a 4-step approval and you reroute it, the document starts over at Step 1 of whatever policy now applies. All previous approvals on that document are discarded.

Because of this, rerouting works best when you are making a significant policy change that affects many documents. For smaller corrections, there may be simpler options (see below).

When NOT to Reroute​

Rerouting is a powerful tool, but it is not always the best choice:

  • Only one or two documents are affected -- It may be faster to ask the new approver to approve those documents directly rather than rerouting and losing existing approval progress.
  • The change is minor -- If you just tweaked a condition threshold slightly, existing documents may be close to fully approved already. Letting them complete under the old policy may be the better path.
  • Documents are on their final approval step -- If approvals are almost done, rerouting restarts the entire process. Consider whether the updated policy would meaningfully change the outcome.

After Rerouting​

Once documents are rerouted:

  • New approvers receive notifications about the documents now in their queue.
  • The approval chain progress on each document resets to reflect the new chain.
  • The rerouting action is recorded in the document's history for audit purposes.

You can verify the reroute by opening any affected document and checking its approval chain to confirm the new policy and approvers are correct.

Learn More​

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