> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://learn.nextedy.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Work Item Approvals

> How Nextedy RISKSHEET shows and files Polarion work item approvals on risk records, how the overall approval state is decided, and how approvals are saved and permitted.

export const LastReviewed = ({date, state}) => {
  if (!date) return null;
  const formatted = new Date(`${date}T00:00:00Z`).toLocaleDateString("en-US", {
    year: "numeric",
    month: "long",
    day: "numeric",
    timeZone: "UTC"
  });
  const label = state === "reviewed" ? `Last reviewed and confirmed up to date on ${formatted}` : `Last updated on ${formatted}`;
  return <p className="mt-10 text-sm text-gray-400 dark:text-zinc-500 not-prose">
      {label}
    </p>;
};

Polarion lets a work item carry **approvals**: a list of approvers, each with a verdict of *Waiting*, *Approved* or *Disapproved*, plus approval comments that explain or question a verdict. Risksheet brings these approvals into the risk analysis itself. Reviewers see who has to approve each risk, file their own verdict and discuss it without leaving the grid, and a quality manager can follow the whole approval round from the same sheet.

This page explains how the pieces fit together. For the steps, see [Set Up Work Item Approvals](/risksheet/guides/reviews/set-up-work-item-approvals), [Approve Risks in the Approvals Sidebar](/risksheet/guides/reviews/approve-risks-in-the-approvals-sidebar) and [Track an Approval Round](/risksheet/guides/reviews/track-an-approval-round).

<Frame caption="A sheet with an Approvals column, an Approvers column, and the Risk Status column decorated by approval state">
  <img src="https://mintcdn.com/none-17b4493f/drLTrBzB3wOin-xK/risksheet/images/work-item-approvals/approvals-columns.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=drLTrBzB3wOin-xK&q=85&s=6aa79c641fd8a187b91619a4e65cb7bb" alt="Risk analysis grid with Approvals and Approvers columns showing Waiting, Disapproved and Approved states" width="2692" height="1904" data-path="risksheet/images/work-item-approvals/approvals-columns.png" />
</Frame>

## The Same Approvals as in Polarion

Risksheet keeps no approval data of its own. Every approver, verdict and approval comment is Polarion's: an approval filed in Risksheet appears in the Polarion work item and its history like one filed in Polarion, and an approval filed in Polarion shows up in Risksheet. Approval comments are the comments Polarion tags as approval comments, so they appear in both places too. Risksheet also counts comments titled "Approval comment", the form older Risksheet versions wrote.

What Risksheet adds is the context. A risk record is approved next to its hazard, harm, ratings and risk controls, and the sheet can be filtered to the items that still need a decision.

## Three Building Blocks

| Building block | What it does | Who uses it |
| - | - | - |
| **Approvals column** (`type: approvals`) | Shows each item's overall approval state, how many approvers have responded, and how many approval comments are unresolved. Read-only. | Everyone reading the sheet |
| **Approvers column** (`type: approvers`) | Lists who is asked to approve each item. Adding a user invites them with status *Waiting*; removing one takes them off the item. | Whoever staffs the review |
| **Approvals sidebar** | Files your own verdict and approval comments, works through your queue, and shows the progress of the whole round. | Reviewers and review leads |

The columns are configured per sheet; the sidebar is available on every sheet unless the sheet switches it off. See [Approval Columns](/risksheet/reference/columns/approval-columns) for the column properties.

## Only Risk Records Are Approved in the Sidebar

The sidebar files approvals on the **risk record** of each row — the row's own work item. An Approvals column can also show the approvals of a row's risk control or of a linked item such as a hazard, so a reviewer can see them, but those are not approved from the risk's row. Approving a linked item from a risk's row would leave it unclear what is being signed off.

## How the Overall State Is Decided

The overall state of an item follows Polarion's own rule:

* **Disapproved** as soon as one approver has disapproved — one disapproval is enough.
* **Approved** only when every approver has approved.
* **Waiting** in every other case.
* An item with no approvers has no approval state. The sidebar counts it as *Not asked yet*; the column filter calls it *No approvers*.

The Approvals column shows this state as a coloured status pill, followed by *N/M responded*, where *M* is the number of approvers and *N* is how many of them are no longer *Waiting*.

## Approvals Are Saved With the Sheet

An approval action in the sidebar — a verdict, an approval comment, a reply, resolving a thread, resetting an item's approvals — is a pending change of the sheet, like an edited cell. It is written to Polarion when you click **Save**, together with the content it approves, and until then it is marked as pending and can be undone with **Undo**. A verdict filed on a risk you have just edited is therefore saved in the same step as the edit.

If Polarion refuses an approval change, for example because of a permission, that change and any approval change queued after it on the same item stay pending, and the sheet tells you why; the rest of the save goes through. When a verdict is refused after its comment was written, the comment is saved and only the verdict stays pending.

## Permissions Come From Polarion

Every action is checked against Polarion's own permissions, both when the sidebar offers it and again when it is saved:

* **Filing a verdict** needs permission to modify the item's approvals, and Polarion's rules for each verdict. Resetting your own verdict back to *Waiting* is a separate Polarion permission, so a reviewer who may approve cannot necessarily undo an approval.
* **Approving without being invited** is possible for users Polarion allows to approve the item: every user while neither the global `approver` role nor the project's `project_approver` role is defined, otherwise only users who hold one of them. Filing a verdict then adds them as an approver.
* **Commenting** needs permission to comment on the item, independently of the approval permission.
* **Changing who approves** needs permission to manage other users' approvals; removing an approver who has already filed a verdict also needs permission to reset approvals.
* **Resetting all approvals** on an item needs the Polarion permission to reset approvals.

In the sidebar, an action you may not take is shown disabled with the reason, and **Reset approvals** is not offered at all without the permission. A change to the Approvers column that you may not make is refused when you save. Nobody can file a verdict on behalf of another user; resetting an item's approvals is the one action that changes other people's verdicts, and it is governed by Polarion's reset permission.

## What Stays in Polarion

* **Electronic signatures.** When Polarion is configured to require an electronic signature for approvals, Risksheet cannot file them. The verdict buttons are disabled with a message pointing you to the Polarion Document View.
* **Document-level approvals** of the LiveDoc stay with Polarion's document workflow.
* **Work item status.** Approvals do not change the risk's workflow status; status transitions are still made through the workflow.

## How Approvals Relate to Approval-Based Reviews

The approval-based review mode (`reviews.reviewManager: ApprovalBased`) predates work item approvals. It adds two review columns that list approval comments and add new ones, without any verdict. With work item approvals in place, those columns show the same approval comments as the sidebar, and are labelled **Approval Comments** and **Add Approval Comment**. See [Configure Approval-Based Reviews](/risksheet/guides/reviews/approval-based-reviews) and [Review Workflows](/risksheet/concepts/review-workflows).

<Frame caption="All approvals: the progress of the round, by item state and by person">
  <img src="https://mintcdn.com/none-17b4493f/drLTrBzB3wOin-xK/risksheet/images/work-item-approvals/all-approvals.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=drLTrBzB3wOin-xK&q=85&s=d40f4f35437ad1a38d28dd673c9060a3" alt="The Approvals sidebar on All approvals, beside the sheet, with counts per state and a list of approvers" width="2692" height="1904" data-path="risksheet/images/work-item-approvals/all-approvals.png" />
</Frame>

## See Also

* [Set Up Work Item Approvals](/risksheet/guides/reviews/set-up-work-item-approvals)
* [Approve Risks in the Approvals Sidebar](/risksheet/guides/reviews/approve-risks-in-the-approvals-sidebar)
* [Track an Approval Round](/risksheet/guides/reviews/track-an-approval-round)
* [Approval Columns](/risksheet/reference/columns/approval-columns)

<LastReviewed date="2026-10-08" />


This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.