KDesk Approvals

This article explains how Approvals work for customers in KDesk, including when contacts can see approval activity, how they respond, how email approval links behave, and how appeals work after a denial.

What Approvals Do

Approvals let a workspace pause a ticket or form-driven process until the right person or group reviews it. A customer-facing approval can be routed to a specific contact, to contacts already attached to the ticket, or to a larger approval path that includes both internal members and customer contacts.

What Customers Need in Order to Participate

Requirement	What it means
Approvals enabled in the workspace	The team must have the approvals module turned on before approval templates, approval groups, or ticket-linked approval requests can be used.
Contact visibility enabled	If the team wants customers to see approval activity on tickets, the workspace must allow contacts to view approvals on tickets.
Customer is part of the active step	A contact can only respond when they are one of the approvers for the current pending step, or when they are assigned as an appeal reviewer for an active appeal.
Email delivery enabled for contact approvals	If the team wants customers to respond from an email link, the workspace must allow approval emails to be sent to contacts.

Where Customers See Approvals

Customers can encounter approvals in two main places:

• Inside the contact portal ticket view: when the workspace allows contacts to view approvals on tickets, an approvals section appears in the ticket activity area.
• From an approval email link: when the workspace sends approval emails to contacts, the recipient can open a dedicated approval response page from the link in the email.

If neither of those settings is enabled for contacts, the approval can still run internally for staff without exposing the approval activity to the customer.

What Customers Can See on a Ticket

When approval visibility is enabled for contacts, the ticket can show the approval title, current status, step names, assigned approvers, comments tied to approval decisions, and appeal details when an appeal is part of the workflow.

This lets a customer understand whether approval is still pending, who needs to respond, whether the request was approved or denied, and whether an appeal is waiting for review.

When Customers Can Approve or Deny

A customer can only submit an approval response when they are part of the current active step. If the approval is pending and the signed-in contact is one of the approvers on that step, the customer can approve or deny it.

If the contact is not assigned to the current step, the approval can still be visible on the ticket, but the response actions stay unavailable.

Approval Response Links

Email approval links open a dedicated response page that shows the approval title, description, current status, step details, and the person expected to respond. Depending on the team configuration, the customer may be required to sign in before they can submit the response.

If sign-in is required and the customer is not authenticated yet, KDesk sends them through the contact sign-in flow and then returns them to the approval response page. If the token has already been used, expired, or is no longer valid for the current step, the page shows that the link is no longer active.

Approval Statuses Customers May See

Status	Meaning
Pending	The current step still needs a response from one or more assigned approvers.
Approved	The approval finished successfully or the active step has been approved.
Denied	An assigned approver rejected the request.
Appeal pending	An appeal was submitted after a denial and is waiting on the assigned appeal reviewers.

Appeals

Appeals are optional. A workspace must enable approval appeals, and the individual approval template must also allow appeals before customers can use that path.

When an approval is denied and appeals are available, a customer can request an appeal from the ticket approval view. KDesk requires an appeal reason, and that reason becomes part of the appeal request shown to the reviewers.

Once an appeal is active, only the assigned appeal reviewers can approve or deny the appeal. Regular ticket viewers can still see the appeal status when the workspace allows approval visibility on tickets.

What Customers Cannot Do

• Customers cannot respond to approval steps that are assigned to someone else.
• Customers cannot use an inactive or previously completed approval link to change a finished decision.
• Customers cannot request an appeal unless the workspace and template both allow appeals for that approval flow.
• Customers do not automatically see all approvals on all tickets. Visibility depends on the workspace settings and whether they have access to the ticket itself.

Recommended Customer Explanation

If you are documenting approvals for your own customers, the clearest explanation is: KDesk can ask a customer contact to approve or deny a request directly from the portal or from an email link. The customer only sees approvals that their service team has chosen to expose, and they can only respond when they are the assigned approver for the current step.