Starting November 1st, 2025, Freshservice is changing how approvals are raised and granted. Read this article to understand the impacts on existing approval flows and actions you must take.


TABLE OF CONTENTS


Limitations in the current Approvals capability

Freshservice allows you to raise approval requests where you can assign one of 4 rules—approval by Everyone, Anyone, Majority, or the First Responder. Approval requests raised manually or through workflows or APIs, are merged and executed in a sequence. There is no scope to raise approval requests simultaneously to users or a group of users.


To understand this better, let’s consider an example. Upgrading payroll software requires approval from IT, change management, payroll, and HR. 


With the current approval process supported by Freshservice, this would be executed sequentially, not simultaneously. The approval is sent first to IT. Once IT acts upon it, it is sent further to other teams. This leads to a longer approval cycle. Additionally, for multiple approval requests, the latest approval rule overrides previous rules.


Introducing Approval Groups

Starting May 1, 2025, Freshservice is introducing approval groups. Freshservice is introducing the following new components to the approvals process:

  • Approvers: An individual user who will receive an approval request. Approvers can refer to any entity— users, agents, requesters, Change Advisory Boards, and owners of impacted services.

  • Approval group: Approval group refers to a set of approvers who are grouped together for granting approvals. For each approval group, approval rules can be set by the agent or admin. The rules determine the outcome of the approval—Everyone, Anyone, Majority, and First Responder.

  • Approval chain: Approval chains contain multiple approval groups. Each approval chain comprises groups that independently grant approval or rejection on a ticket/change. Here again, approval rules can be set for the chain—All groups approve, Any group approves, Majority of the groups approve, First responding group approves. Only when conditions set by the rules are met will the entire chain be considered approved. The process of approval within the groups can happen in parallel and in no particular order.


How Approval Groups work

With approval groups, approvals can be sent to distinct groups of approvers with rules governing each approval. There are three ways in which approval groups are created:

  • Manual: When an agent/requester raises an approval request, approval groups are created.
  • Through workflows: When a ‘send approval email’ action is triggered, it creates an approval group with the users under the action added to one group.
  • APIs: When an API request is placed to the approvals API.


Here’s how approval groups will look like in Freshservice:

What is changing?

  • Manual Approvals 
    • Current behavior: When multiple approval requests are triggered, they are merged, and the latest approval rule overrides previously added rules.
    • Post roll-out of Parallel Approvals:
      • All new approval requests will be created using approval groups and chains.
      • Approval requests will not merge anymore.
      • The approval rule will not be overridden by default.
Note: This will apply to approval requests raised manually, via workflows, or APIs.


  • Workflows
    • Current behavior: Approval requests raised through workflows are merged without unique approval rules. The last added approval rule is set for all approvers.

    • Post roll-out of Parallel Approvals:
      • All approval actions will be grouped under a new action “Request for approval” in workflows.
      • Each “Send approval mail to” action creates a dedicated approval group. 
      • Approval groups can be named.
      • Rules can be defined at the level of the group.
      • For action nodes with more than one “Send approval mail to” action, a new configuration, “Execute this workflow when”, is introduced. This helps users define when a workflow proceeds further.
      • A new action “Set rule for approval chain as” will define the rule for approval chain.


  • APIs
    • Current behavior: Approvals raised via APIs get merged, and the latest set approval rule takes precedence.


    • Post roll-out of Parallel Approvals: An optional parameter, approval_group_id, is being introduced to the current API to enable the addition of approvers to a specific approval group.

      Note: If approval_group_id is not provided, distinct approval groups will be created for every API hit. They will be part of the current approval chain.


Impact on existing approvals

For all use cases replicable with approval groups, Freshservice will perform the transition with no intervention required. There will be limited impact on existing flows. Here’s a summary of all impacts:


  • Tickets or changes that have already been approved will not be impacted.
  • Approvals raised through workflows:
    • In workflow configurations that have more than one ‘Send approval email’ action node, the nodes will be merged into one single group. For all these groups, the “Execute this workflow when” configuration will be set as ‘All Groups should approve’.

    • Approvals raised from Workflows will now create new approval groups with unique approval rules, instead of merging with existing approvals. 

      Note:			
      • The approval rule last added will be adopted. If the latest action does not have a rule due to only one approver being present, the rule added prior will be used.			
      • If different "From Emails" are configured against each send approval action, the last configured “From Email” will be used for the group. This applies only to the Tickets module.

    • Workflows with multiple “Send approval email” actions that have other actions in between will be combined into a single approval group, and the UI will reflect the same. There will be no impact on behavior.



Feature roll-out details

The feature roll-out is planned in the following phases:

  1. New sign-ups: For new sign-ups post May 1st, 2025, approval groups will be available by default.

  2. Early access: To try out approval groups, please contact your TAM/CSM and work with them to fully understand the changes required and migration impacts.

  3. General Availability: On Nov 1st, 2025, approval groups will be available for all accounts.