We've all been there. A job request or a project is sitting in limbo because someone's waiting on a sign-off from Finance. There's a thread on Slack, a bunch of emails, and a "did anyone actually approve this?" message in the group chat. It's chaos, it's not auditable, and frankly, it sucks.

Say hello to Wamly's new Job Request and Approval Engine. Our brand-new system facilitates and automates this entire journey in your current Wamly workflow.

Configure your rules once, and Wamly takes care of the rest, automatically routing, blocking, and recording every sign-off. No more email threads, no more guesswork, just one engine, one audit trail and one source of truth.

Whether you're the admin setting up the rules, the approver clicking the big green button, or the requester submitting their first job role in the system, this guide has you covered. Let's dive in!

Persona 1: The Requestor

Everything starts with a request! Gone are the days of requesting new roles through random voice notes, buried emails, or scattered Word docs! We've streamlined the process by building a formal request system directly into Wamly. Now, any Wamly user can kick off a request in just a few clicks.

You can get the ball rolling in two easy steps:

1. Start a New Request

Head over to your Wamly Menu, click on Projects, and look for the + Request button at the top of your window.

A window will pop up asking for the essentials: Fill out each section including: Project Title, Department & Cost Centre, Employment Type etc. Then, add users to your project team. Think about the people you would usually call or email to get a new role approved (like your line manager or HR).

• Search by name to add individuals.
• Select an existing group if you have a go-to team.

2. What Happens Next?

If your organisation has the approval engine enabled, you will see two options: Request Approval Now or Request Approval Later.

• Request Approval Now: If you're confident that you've completed all details of the project spec correctly, you can kick off the approval process immediately. From there on, your job is done! Your approval team will instantly receive a notification to review it.
• Request Approval Later: If you'd like your team to review your spec or build it out further, you can hand the project over to them and have them request approval later. Your request will be saved as a draft project and your team will get notifications that they have a new project to review and manage.

On the Professional Plan? If you don't have access to approval workflows, your job request will automatically be saved as a draft project with the project specifications pre-filled. From there, your HR team can edit the project and move forward with the standard Wamly process.

Now, let's get into the workings of our new engine.

The Pillars of the Job Request & Approval Engine

Here are a few concepts that need to land before we lift off into the functionality (Read more about each in the following sections).

• Request Form: A job request form consists of the full project spec details, i.e. Project name, Department, Cost Centre and employment type info which is used to trigger project creation in the system.
• Workflows: A workflow is a set of approval rules linked to activating a project. It says "for this kind of action, these people need to approve, and "this" many of them need to agree." You can have one workflow or many, and they all run in parallel.
• Conditions: Conditions tell the engine when/where a workflow is required. A workflow within the role level of Department: Sales only triggers for Sales projects. A workflow with a salary cap of 20K p/m triggers for every project that exceeds the salary.
• Approvers: Each workflow has a list of approvers. They can be static (specific named users or groups — handy for "the CFO must always approve this") or dynamic (resolved at runtime from a role in your permissions setup, handy for "whoever holds the Manager role in this project's Cost Centre").
• Decision Modes: Decision modes define how many approvers need to say yes for the workflow to be satisfied. Pick from All, any one, a percentage or number of approvers.
• Fallbacks: This is your safety net. What happens if nobody holds that role at that role level? Fallbacks step in: first the per-workflow fallback, then your org-level global fallback, and if neither is set, the workflow owner gets a heads-up so they can fix the configuration.

These pillars work together. Get them right and you have a request and approval engine that runs itself. To help you understand the engine we scoped out four personas. Pick which one is relevant to you and read all about your new capabilities.

How Do Approval Workflows Work?

After your company administrator sets the rules, Wamly automatically manages the entire approval process. When someone triggers a new project, the engine checks which workflows apply, routes the request to the right people, and blocks the project from going live, until everyone's signed off. All while logging every action: who decided what, when, and why. Audit-ready, every time.

Best of all, you don't have to build a separate workflow for every department or cost centre. Approvers can be resolved dynamically based on roles that an organisation admin has set up in your User Permissions and Roles setup, so one well-designed workflow can cover your whole org.

Decision Modes At a Glance

How do you decide how many approvers are needed? Here's the cheat sheet.

Persona 2: The Organisation Admin

If you're the person who designs how your organisation makes decisions, this is your playground. Follow these seven steps to set up your first workflow.

Step 1: Navigate to Approvals

Head to My Organisation, click on the Approvals tab. Once you create your first workflows this is where you'll see your workflows listed in a table and grouped by the action and condition they apply to. Currently Wamly only supports Project Specification approval.

Step 2: Create a New Workflow

While in the Approvals tab, click Add + and the workflow creator opens. It is a three step process. Fill out every section and click next. Let's start with the Settings window. You will see the following:

• Workflow name: Give it something anyone can understand at a glance, like "Head of Department Sign-off" or "Hiring Engineers Workflow". Future you will thank present you.
• Description: Tell your future colleagues why this workflow exists.
• Governed action: Pick the action this workflow applies to (for now, that's Project Spec Approval, more governed actions will be added over time).
• Toggle on quick approval by email if you want approvers to sign off without having to log in to Wamly.
• Select Re-approval required if you want your approvers to re-approve if changes are made to a project.

Step 3: Workflow Conditions

Next set up your Workflow Conditions. These are the conditions that decide when this workflow kicks in.

• Choose a role level: Department, Cost Centre, etc.
• Set the value: a specific value (like Sales) or ANY to match everything.
• Add one or more conditions; they combine with AND logic, so all of them must match.

Step 4: Choose Your Approvers

Next, decide who has to sign off. You can mix and match static and dynamic approvers in the same workflow.

• Static approvers: Pick specific named users from a search. Best for fixed, named accountability ("the CFO").
• Dynamic approvers: Pick a Group or a Role. The engine identifies the actual people at the moment the request is created. Best for org-wide rules ("whoever is in the Gauteng Sales Manager Group" or has the role of "Exco").

Step 5: Pick a Decision Mode

Choose how many approvers need to agree (see the cheat sheet above). Drop down, pick, done.

Step 6: Configure Your Fallbacks

Fallbacks kick in if the engine can't find anyone holding the required role in the relevant scope. Set a per-workflow fallback (a named user or a different role), and make sure your org has a global fallback configured too. Better safe than sorry.

Note: If a dynamic approver can't be resolved and no fallback is configured, the request can't proceed and the workflow owner gets a notification to fix the configuration.

Step 7: Save

Hit Add Approval and your workflow is live. Two things happen quietly behind the scenes:

• Your workflow gets a version number.
• Any future edits create a new version. Existing requests keep using the version they started with, so you can update rules without breaking decisions already in progress.

Success! Your workflow is now part of the engine. By automating these steps, you've just gifted your team some serious time back. Exceptional efficiency looks good on you.

Persona 3: The Approvers

If you've been added as an approver, this is your section. The good news? It's quick.

You've Got Two Ways to Decide

When a request lands, you'll get a notification and an email in your inbox.

• In-app: In your project window, click the Outstanding Approval link, read the request, hit Approve or Reject. You can add a comment and if you're rejecting, please do, because the requester will need to know what to fix.

• Via email: If email approval is enabled for this workflow, you can approve or reject straight from the notification email without opening Wamly. Nice, right?

Every decision is also recorded with your name and a timestamp. No "I thought I approved that" arguments.

Persona 4: For the Project Team

Adding a New Project

Users with project creation permissions can click the + Create button at the top of the project screen to set up a project as usual. Because they already hold these permissions, submitting a job request is not required. If that is you, take a look at the newly redesigned Project Specifications page.

This tab captures all the essential information required for a comprehensive job spec. Plus, with new version history, collaborating is easier than ever. You can track who changed what, when and each new version must be published before it goes live to candidates, giving your team total control and transparency.

The user can simply complete the project setup, click save changes, as each tab now saves independently, giving you more flexibility to continue at a later stage and when you are done click Activate.

If your project triggers new approval workflows these will be automatically added and require approval before the project can be activated. The approval process can be started by clicking the Request Approval button in the bottom left corner of the Project Specification tab.

When You're Blocked

So you tried to advance a project and Wamly said "not so fast." Don't panic, this is the engine doing exactly what it's supposed to.

• You'll see a clear message telling you the action is blocked, which workflow(s) are pending, and who's been asked to approve.
• Sit tight. When creating a request, you can decide to request approval now or later. When you click now, approvers will get notified automatically; you don't need to chase them.
• Need to amend? If something in your request needs to change, you can amend the underlying details and resubmit. The engine will re-evaluate the request from scratch, applicable workflows, approvers, and all.

Note: If your request is denied, everything is saved. When changes are made, each workflow is re-evaluated and proceeds based on the workflow rules. Workflows that don't need re-approval will not be reset.

A Word on the Audit Trail

Every event is logged. Every. Single. One.

• Workflow created, edited, archived.
• Request created, approver resolved, fallback applied.
• Each individual decision (with approver, timestamp, and comment).
• Amendments and re-evaluations.
• Admin overrides (with the mandatory reason).

The audit trail is immutable, once written, it can't be changed. So when your auditor comes calling, you've got the receipts.

Need a Hand?

We know that's a lot to take in and you've earned that coffee. If you're stuck setting up a workflow, debugging why a request didn't route the way you expected, or just want a sanity check before you flick the switch on a big rule, we're here for you.

• Reach out to your Account Manager for a walkthrough.
• Email support@wamly.io for anything urgent.

— The Wamly Team