How can you create a manual approval step in a Zap?

You can collect the form response in a spreadsheet app like Google Sheets and then insert a checkbox column ("Approved") and trigger the zap based on updates to that column. You can do the same in airtable and then create a view filtered to the tick column and then trigger by new update in that view.

On Kanban boards like Trello, the zap can be triggered when a card is dragged from one list to another. List 1 "Quotes" List 2 "Approved Quotes" This can also be done in Airtable with its Kanban view

In Gmail a zap can be triggered when a label is manually added to an email. Label = "Approved quote"

Another useful email "vetting" process is to "Create Draft" rather than "Send email", so that you can give it a quick once over and tweak before sending.

There is definitely more than a single answer here!

But the way I would do it is through a two zap process. The first zap triggers off of whatever like a form submission etc, processes the data and creates the document for editing or approval. That zap finishes by communicating (either through email or slack or the like) a message to an approver, that message has three links, one to the document for editing/reviewing, one labeled "no" and another link labeled "yes" those two links are encoded GET URLs for the webhook trigger in step 2 zap.

That URL is encoded with ?approve=yes&docURL=https://whatever.com/etc&approvername=fred OR ?approve=no&docURL=https://whatever.com/etc&approvername=fred and then the second zap which is triggered from the webhook has a path in there for approve=yes and another for approve=no. Etc.

I've actually used this in a real world situation where the first zap also fires off a third zap via a webhook which delays for three days and checks to see if the approval request has been responded to, (via storage) and then if not it sends a similar email to the next step up in the approval process.

We've debated how many levels/layers to do this, but so far we're just using two approvers, if the second doesn't take action within three days a disapprove webhook is called.

Yeah for me I have built this in a couple different ways depending on the situation.

Simple Yes: Airtable or Google Sheets (I used Airtable), with a checkbox field to trigger the second part of the automation.

Complex Decision with Multiple Options and Data Input: Process Street (I work here full disclosure) - Runs a checklist, fills with relevant data, and then as a part of that process, provides you with multiple options you can take (and potentially input other data into text fields/form fields), before triggering the second automation using a checklist.

Simple Yes but Multiple Options - No Data: Trello - Creates a card with info, you then move it to the appropriate list based on your decision. Works best for a multi-option decision, but not for having to input specific variable data.

Simple Yes but with Basic Data: Email or Slack Message sent to you with data, and then you provide a specific response to the question as a reply that then triggers the second Zap and enacts the decision. Works if you need to input basic data and make a basic decision. You could also receive a Push Bullet and then reply via something like SMS or Push by Zapier.

This topic has been going for a while, but I just saw it. What I did in one of our workflows is the following:

• Create again a 2 zap workflow structure; 
  • One zap would trigger on a form, mail or anything that needs to be approved and sends a message to our Slack
  • The other zap would take care of the approvement and further actions

The approvement zap is the interesting part, we liked to have it all on 1 system (Slack);

• The approvement workflow would trigger on a new slack message in a private channel
• There would be a filter that allows the workflow to continue only if the message starts with “approve” or “Approve”
• We used a formatter that would remove the “approve” string and only take the last bit. In this case we would approve per ID, for example “approve 1” and the formatter would take 1
• The ID, 1 in this case, would search for any data that is related to this in a Google sheet and continue with the workflow.

Cheers! 

~Bjorn