Going to be away? With the SweetHawk Approve app, you can set your out-of-office status and optionally choose someone to respond to approvals on your behalf. You can also delegate individual approvals at any time, without setting yourself as away.
Set yourself as out of office
You can manage your out-of-office settings from your approval portal or, if you are a Zendesk agent, from the Approve top bar app.
- Open Settings using the gear icon or menu.
- Select Out of office.
- Turn on I'm out of office.
- Choose when your absence starts:
- Start now to set yourself as away immediately.
- Schedule for later to choose a future start date and time.
- Optionally, enter an Until date and time. Your out-of-office status will turn off automatically at that time. Leave this blank if you prefer to turn it off manually.
- To forward approvals while you are away, set a delegate as described in the next steps. Otherwise, click Save.
Out of office without a delegate
When you are out of office without a delegate, Approve handles new approvals based on whether the other approvers can cover your response.
- If other approvers can cover the approval, your response is automatically marked as Abstained, removing you from the pool of approvers for that step. For example, if a step has multiple approvers and only one needs to respond, you can be removed while the others handle it.
- If your response is required, you remain in the approval pool. This applies when you are the only approver, or when all listed approvers in a step must respond.
Abstaining means stepping aside without approving or declining. Keeping required approvers in the pool prevents an approval from immediately timing out because an essential approver is away.
Automatically delegate approvals while you are away
If someone else should respond on your behalf, add a delegate to your out-of-office settings:
- In Settings → Out of office, configure your absence.
- Turn on Delegate my approvals.
- Enter the person's email address in Delegate to.
- Click Save.
While your out-of-office status is active, new approvals sent to you are automatically forwarded to your delegate. They can respond as normal, and their response is recorded and logged under their own identity.
Delegate an approval manually
You can delegate specific approvals at any time, even when you are not out of office.
- Open your approval portal or the Approve top bar app.
- Find the approval under Pending.
- Click Delegate on the approval. To delegate multiple approvals, select their checkboxes and use the Delegate button above the list.
- Follow the prompts to choose the recipient and complete the delegation.
This is a one-off action for the selected approvals. It does not set up automatic delegation for future requests. The recipient must not already be an approver on the current step.
Choose what happens to pending approvals
If you already have pending approvals when you set your delegate, a popup asks whether you want to delegate those too:
- Delegate them forwards your existing pending approvals to your delegate now, provided they are eligible for delegation.
- Keep them leaves those approvals with you to answer yourself.
This choice applies to your existing pending approvals. New approvals will still follow your delegation settings while you are away.
If your delegate is also away
Approve follows multiple levels of out-of-office delegation. If your delegate is also out of office and has set their own delegate, Approve follows that delegation rule.
For example, if you delegate to Alex, and Alex is out of office with Sam as their delegate, the approval is forwarded to Sam.
If your delegate is already an approver
An approval cannot be delegated to someone who is already assigned to its current step.
If you try to forward an existing pending approval to that person, Approve displays a message explaining that it could not be delegated. Your out-of-office settings are still saved, but that approval remains with you.
View delegated approvals
Approve shows who an approval has been delegated to, so you and others can see who is expected to respond.
The approval timeline displays a message explaining that you are out of office and that the approval was delegated automatically.
In your portal or top bar app, you can view forwarded approvals under Delegated. You can still view these approvals, but you cannot respond or add comments to them.
A banner also shows that your out-of-office status is active and identifies your delegate.