Approval queue and states · SmartERP Documentation

The base module's post has two states, Draft and Posted. The AI Growth Workforce adds five more, in the order a person reads them.

The states#

State	Meaning
Draft	Being written, by a person or an AI agent.
Pending Approval	Submitted; waiting for a Manager.
Approved	A Manager cleared it. Not yet scheduled.
Scheduled	Has a date in the future and will be published then.
Posted	Published. (This state comes from the base module.)
Failed	Publishing raised an error. The reason is in Failure Reason.
Cancelled	Withdrawn.

 Draft ──Submit──► Pending Approval ──Approve──► Approved ──Schedule──► Scheduled ──► Posted
   ▲                     │                                                  │  ╲
   └───────Reject────────┘                                                  │   ╲──► Failed
   ▲                                                                        │
   └─────────────────── Reset to Draft ◄────────────────────────────────────┘

Transitions#

Button	From	To	Who	Rules
Submit for Approval	Draft, Failed, Cancelled	Pending Approval	Anyone	Clears any earlier rejection reason.
Approve	Pending Approval	Approved	Manager	Records Approved By and Approved On.
Reject	Pending Approval	Draft	Manager	Logged in the activity trail.
Schedule	Approved, Draft	Scheduled	Anyone, with limits	Needs a Scheduled Date in the future. A non-Manager may only schedule an Approved post.
Publish	see the gate	Posted	see the gate	Calls the platforms.
Reset to Draft	anything except Posted	Draft	Anyone	Clears the failure reason.
Cancel	anything except Posted	Cancelled	Anyone
Generate with AI	not Posted or Cancelled	unchanged	Anyone	Asks n8n for a draft.

Refusals you may see:

"Only a Social Media Manager can approve posts." and "…reject posts."
"Only posts pending approval can be approved." and "…rejected."
"Only draft, failed or cancelled posts can be submitted for approval."
"Set a Scheduled Date before scheduling 'X'."
"The scheduled date must be in the future."
"This post must be approved before it can be scheduled."
"A published post cannot be reset. Use Delete to remove it from the platforms."
"A published post cannot be cancelled."

The approval queue#

Social Media → AI Workforce → Approval Queue lists every post in Pending Approval. Managers work through it: open a post, read it, press Approve or Reject.

An agent's form shows Awaiting Approval, the number of that agent's posts sitting in the queue.

Worked example#

The AI Content Creator (Approval Required) drafts a post from a brief. The post is marked AI Generated and is a Draft.
A colleague reviews it and presses Submit for Approval. The log records "Submitted for human approval", approval status Blocked - Needs Human.
A Manager opens the Approval Queue, reads it and presses Approve. The post is Approved; the log records Human Approved with the manager's name.
The Manager sets a Scheduled Date and presses Schedule. The post is Scheduled.
Within five minutes of that date, the scheduled action publishes it. The post becomes Posted and the log records the publish.

Every one of those steps is in the activity log, attributed to a person or an agent.

Post fields the workflow adds#

Field	Meaning
Handled By	The agent responsible.
AI Generated	Set when content came back from the AI workflow.
AI Content	Not Requested, Generation Requested, Content Received or Generation Failed.
AI Brief	What you want the AI to write about. Empty means it works from the current message.
Approved By / Approved On	Who cleared it, and when.
Failure Reason	Why publishing failed.
Characters and a warning	Live length, with a warning when over a platform's limit.
Logged AI Actions	Count of activity entries for this post.