Add Comments to Approval Workflow

Lin K.

Include a comments section to the current approval workflow (currently only approve or decline), this would be helpful when an approver has a question or comment about a pending approval.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Lin K.

This is already available!

You can select "A comment" as one of the specific fields sent out with an Approval Request:

This then allows the approver to add a comment at the same time as Approving or Declining:

Note that this is only for the Conversations area of a Smartsheet sheet. If you want approvers to be able to fill out other columns, then I would suggest using an Update Request instead.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Alex@

Hi @Genevieve P.

Thanks for sharing, I am also having the same issue as Lin. Followed the steps as above using the 'Specific Fields' option and pulling a 'Comments' field through from my sheet; on Approval however user is unable to view the 'Comments' as field locked - have I missed something?

Thanks,

Alex

Genevieve P.

Hi @Alex@

Are you pulling through a column that you created and titled "Comments", or are you selecting the field "A comment" in the workflow as in my screen capture above?

Alex@

Hi @Genevieve P.

Am pulling a column that I created titled 'Comments'. Trialled again and can now see there is a generic 'A comment' field as default

Thanks for the support

Genevieve P.

No problem! 🙂

Debra L

@Genevieve P. I have the same challenge, tried out the 'a comment' workaround and would prefer to use the approval workflow; however, is there a way to modify the automated message to include the data from the 'a comment' field without the additional info above it, including a link to the master sheet (see highlighted in yellow)...so it looks cleaner to the requestor?

Genevieve P.

Hey @Debra L

The only way to exclude the Sheet Link is to send the alert as Message Only (without any fields).

Debra L

Thanks Genevieve---I am going to keep playing with it. I think that this is one feature that could use minor enhancements, specifically when it comes to allowing approvers to respond to reasons for declining a request, besides what is currently available. Regards, Debra.