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Governance

Understand how to manage Process Approvals & Process Reviews within Flowingly

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Written by Will Dowden

Introduction

As your library of workflows and process maps grows, maintaining quality and consistency becomes critical. The Governance module in Flowingly helps your team enforce best practices and ensure compliance through two key features:

Key Features:

  1. Publish Approvals – Ensure flow models go through an approval process before being published.

  2. Processes Due for Review – Stay on top of flow models that require periodic review.

Prerequisites

To have publishing approvals take place there is a specific setup required, this includes:

  1. Assigning users with the Flow Model Editor role as editors to a category

  2. Assigning a Category Publisher to a category (Can only be users assigned the Business Administrator or Flow model Administrator roles)

Only Business Administrators are able to configure the assignments listed above and are managed in Setup > Categories

Instructions

Roles & Permissions Overview

With the Governance module is enabled, the following roles can access it:

1. Flow Model Editor

  • Can create and edit flow models

  • Cannot publish without approval

  • Must submit flow models for approval to a category with an assigned Category Publisher

  • Can be assigned as a 'Category Editor' to collaborate on editing flow models within a specific category

2. Category Editor

  • Assigned per category or subcategory

  • Can edit all Flow Models which have been assigned to the category they are noted as a Category Editor

  • Users must have the Flow Model Editor role to be a candidate, or an equivalent custom role

3. Category Publisher

  • Assigned per category or subcategory

  • Responsible for reviewing and publishing submitted flow models in their assigned category

  • Must have the Business Administrator or Flow Model Administrator role assigned to them to become a candidate, or an equivalent custom role

4. Business Administrator

  • Assigns category publishers and category editors as part of setting up the governance module

  • Can view all active publish requests across the business

  • Retains the ability to publish any Flow Model without approval

  • Can be assigned as a Category Publisher

  • Can monitor all models awaiting review

5. Flow Model Administrator

  • Can create and edit flow models

  • Retains the ability to publish any flow model without approval

  • Can be selected and select owners for flow models

  • Can be selected as a Category Publisher

Configuring Category Publishers and Editors

Navigate to Setup > Categories > Edit Category > Navigate to Governance Tab

In this section the following can be configured:

  • Category Publisher – The user responsible for reviewing and publishing flow models in a category. Individual users can be assigned to multiple categories

  • Category Editors – Users/Teams allowed to collaboratively edit flow models within this category.

Who Can Be a Category Editor?

To assign someone as a Category Editor:

  • They must hold a role with the permission:
    Governance > Flow Model Category Editor > Candidate

    • This permission does not cascade down into sub-categories and must be assigned to for each individual category.

  • Flow Model Editor role has this permission by default.

  • One can also add teams here. Any team member with the appropriate permission will gain edit access to flow models in the category.

Who Can Be a Category Publisher?

To assign someone as a Category Publisher:

  • They must hold a role with the permission:
    Governance > Flow Model Category Publisher > Candidate

    • This permission does not cascade down into sub-categories and must be assigned to for each individual category.

  • Flow Model Admin and Business Admin roles include this permission by default.

Collaborating on Editing flow models

  • When creating or editing a flow model, set the Category in the Create/Edit Details pop-up.

  • This links the flow model to the specific category’s governance settings.

  • Once a category is assigned, all Category Editors for that category will have edit access to the flow model.

  • Editors can access and modify the flow model directly from the Library.

  • Only users configured as Category Editors (with appropriate permissions) will be able to collaborate on editing.

Submitting a Flow Model for Approval

When a Flow Model Editor submits a flow model for approval, they can include:

  • Notes to Category Publisher – Optional comments to assist the reviewer. These notes are permanently recorded in the modeler’s Feedback section.

  • Due Date (optional) – A target date for review and publishing.

Note: Selected category must have a Category Publisher assigned for the approval process to proceed.

Reviewing & Approving Requests

What happens after submission?

  • The assigned Category Publisher receives an email with request details.

Where to find approval requests?

Tab Name

Who Sees It?

Purpose

My Publish Approvals

Category Publisher

Lists all approval requests assigned to the publisher

Sent for Publish Approval

Flow Model Editor

Tracks all requests sent. If submitted by a category editor(collaborator), the request is visible to both the creator and the editor who sent it.

All Publish Approvals

Business Admin

View of all active publish requests across the business

Processes Due for Review

Process Owner, Flow Model Owners & Creator

Lists models due for review in the next 10 business days (configurable)

Processes Due for Review

Business Admin

Lists all models awaiting review across the business

Steps for Category Publisher:

  1. Open the request via the Governance My Approvals tab.


  2. The flow model opens in read-only mode – publishers can review but not edit, preserving the version's integrity.

  3. Review any comments or feedback provided by the requester. The comments can also be used to send feedback back to the editors if any further changes are required.


  4. Use Compare Versions to assess changes between this version and the last published/submitted one.


  5. If satisfied, proceed to Publish.

All publish settings are pre-filled based on the original request, but they can be edited if needed.

The Category Publisher can only publish to categories they are assigned to.


Once published, the requester receives an email notification confirming approval and publication.

Tips & Best Practice

We recommend using Teams as a way to manage the Category Editors rather than managing this through assigning with individual users. These Teams can be reused across multiple categories if needed and only the users within the Team that will gain editing access are those with the relevant role (Flow Model Editor).


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