Working the approval queue

The approval queue is the one place where proposed actions wait for your decision. Each item is a single proposed action with enough context on the card to decide without hunting for the original — and each decision leaves a history row you can check afterwards. It is the human end of the inbound → approve → execute loop.

What kinds of items land in my queue?

Each item carries a kind — what will happen if you approve it. These are the kinds in use today:

Kind	What approving it does
inbound_draft_reply	Writes a reply to the item and holds it as a draft.
inbound_reply	Replies to the sender.
inbound_forward	Passes the item on to someone else.
inbound_file	Files the item where it belongs, with no reply.
inbound_create_task	Creates a task from the item.
inbound_create_crm_lead	Creates a lead in your CRM from the item.
inbound_delegation	Hands the item to another person or head to own.
inbound_bulk_action	Applies one decision across several items at once.
inbound_sor_write	Writes into a system of record.
channel_reply	Replies on one of your connected channels.
crm_outreach	Contacts someone in your CRM.
marketing	Runs a marketing action that goes out under your name.
alert_rule	Changes a rule that decides when you get alerted.
brief_comms_teams_send	Posts a briefing or comms message to Teams.
…_proposed	A learning proposal rather than an action on a single item.

The split that matters most: some kinds leave your company (inbound_reply, channel_reply, crm_outreach, marketing, brief_comms_teams_send) and some only move things inside it. Give the first group the slower read.

What can I see before opening an item?

The card is enriched, so most decisions do not need a click. You get the From, the subject, a snippet of the content, and badges summarising the item.

For routine work that is enough. Open the item when the badges and the snippet disagree with each other, or when the kind sends something outward.

What does the item detail tell me?

Two things: the matched playbook — which rule the head used to decide this — and an ordered steps preview of what will happen.

Be aware of the limit. Today’s actions are single-verb, so the steps preview is usually a single step. It confirms what the one action is; it is not yet a plan of a longer sequence.

How do I know the action actually ran?

Look at the outcome on the approval history row. Every approval records one of three:

• executed — the action ran.
• skipped — it did not run, and nothing changed.
• failed — it was attempted and did not complete.

Approving is not the same as done. Your approval is a decision; the outcome is the record of what happened to it. A skipped or failed row means nothing went out, even though you clicked approve.

Build the habit

After you clear a batch, run back down the history and read the outcomes. Ten seconds of scanning is what stands between “I approved that reply” and “that reply was sent” — and only the outcome column can tell you which one is true.

Can I take an approval back?

Sometimes — and the exception is the one that matters most.

Undo covers inbound actions that created something inside Business-Gym: creating a task, forwarding an item, filing a document into your knowledge base. Those can be reversed for 24 hours after they run. The reversal is itself recorded, so the audit trail shows both the action and the undo rather than quietly erasing it.

An external message cannot be recalled

Undo never reverses a send. Once a reply has left for a customer, no button in Business-Gym brings it back — the queue will tell you plainly “Can’t undo — already sent”. This is a deliberate line, not a missing feature: nothing can un-send an email, so the product does not offer a control that would imply otherwise.

This is the reason the approval step exists. Read an external reply before you approve it, not after.

Two more limits worth knowing:

• Only the person who approved it can undo it. Undo is tied to the human who committed the action, so a colleague cannot reverse your decision — they would have to correct it by hand.
• After 24 hours the approval stands. Putting it right then means correcting the action in whichever system it landed in.

What is a good way to work through a full queue?

1. Sort by consequence, not by age. Deal with the kinds that leave your company first, while you are fresh.
2. Decide from the card where the From, subject, snippet, and badges agree. Open the rest.
3. Read the playbook on anything that surprises you — a wrong proposal usually means a playbook matched that should not have.
4. Check the outcomes before you close the tab.

Next: the inbound → approve → execute loop explains what decides that an item needs you at all, and the glossary covers the terms.

Is there a faster way to work a long queue?

Yes — if clearing the queue is a daily job rather than an occasional one, the triage cockpit guide covers the working rhythm: how to move through a session quickly and what a finished session looks like.

• The inbound triage cockpit