Approval Flows

An approval flow is a running instance of a governance template. It tracks the state of a review from submission to final decision.

Flow Lifecycle

State	Transitions To
Submitted	In Progress (reviewer assigned)
In Progress	Approved, Rejected, or Amendment Required
Amendment Required	In Progress (resubmitted)
Approved	Complete
Rejected	Complete

How Reviewers Are Selected

Templates define reviewer roles — not specific people. When a flow starts, Apiway resolves roles to actual users based on:

• Organisational structure — Team leads, functional area owners
• API ownership — The producing team’s designated reviewers
• Escalation rules — If a reviewer doesn’t respond within a threshold, the flow escalates

Reviewing a Submission

Platform API

# List pending approvals
curl https://core.api.apiway.net/v1/governance/approvals?status=pending \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

# Submit a decision
curl -X POST https://core.api.apiway.net/v1/governance/approvals/{id} \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -d '{
    "outcome": "Approved",
    "comments": "Looks good. Security model is solid."
  }'

Management UI

Navigate to Governance > Pending Approvals. Each approval card shows the API details, compliance score, and recommendation summary. Click to review the full specification, then approve, reject, or request amendments.

What Reviewers See

Each approval includes:

• API specification — Full OAS with highlighted changes (for updates)
• Compliance report — Score and individual violations
• Recommendations — Design improvement suggestions
• Governance history — Previous flows for this API
• Submission context — Who submitted, when, and why

Auto-Approval

For lower-risk scenarios, templates can enable auto-approval. Common configurations:

• Internal APIs in development environments → auto-approved
• APIs with a compliance score above a threshold → auto-approved
• Production deployments → a human approves

These are settings on a template, not rules of the platform. A template that approves everything automatically is one of the ones that ships, and a small team can run on it and still get the record of what was decided. Requiring a person, or several named ones, is what you move to when there is somebody who wants to be asked.

Amendment Required suppresses auto-approval

Once a reviewer requests amendments, auto-approval is disabled for that flow. The resubmission always requires manual re-review — ensuring the reviewer’s feedback was actually addressed.

Flow Visualisation

Completed flows include an SVG diagram showing the full approval graph — who was involved, what path the flow took, and the timeline. This is generated at completion and stored as a permanent audit record.

Notifications

Apiway notifies reviewers and submitters at each state change:

• Reviewer assigned — “You have a new approval waiting”
• Decision made — “Your API was approved/rejected”
• Amendment requested — “Changes are needed before this can proceed”
• Escalation — “This approval has been escalated to you”