Check out this short video for a guided overview of how approval workflows are configured in CyberGrants, and explore the FAQs below for answers to the most common questions by topic.
This article addresses questions that came up during the Mastering Approval Workflows training series (May 2026).
Whether you're just getting started with approval workflows or looking to optimize what you've already built, this resource is relevant across all program types - Grants Management, Employee Engagement, and Medical Affairs.
Questions are organized by topic. If your question isn't covered here, reach out to support.
Ownership Routing Rules
What happens when a request matches more than one rule?
The system evaluates rules based on the criteria count, starting with the rule that has the most criteria. The first rule that matches all of its criteria wins - the request is routed accordingly, and evaluation stops.
If two rules have the same criteria count and a request qualifies for both, the system will randomly select one. It will not flag the conflict or ask you to choose. This means overlapping rules can produce inconsistent routing that's hard to trace.
Best practice: Make sure each rule has distinct criteria so no two rules can match the same request. If you're unsure whether your rules overlap, use the Approval Workflow Visualizer (Admin > Workflow Management > Approval Workflow Visualizer) to review your rules side by side.
Will the system warn me if I create a duplicate rule?
Yes - if you attempt to create a rule with criteria that are an exact match to an existing rule, the system will warn you that a rule with those criteria already exists. However, this only catches exact duplicates. Rules that overlap without being identical will not trigger a warning.
How do I audit my existing ownership routing rules?
There are two options:
Approval Workflow Visualizer (Admin > Workflow Management) - click into each rule to see its criteria, dollar thresholds, and steps without opening each rule individually.
Configuration Report (Reports > Report Library > Configuration Reports > Approval Rules) - download a pre-built report showing rule names, steps, and grant amount ranges. Note: this report does not show criteria, so use it alongside the Visualizer for a complete picture.
Recommendation: Do a full review at least once a year, or any time you suspect rules may have become redundant or conflicting. It does require a manual review - there's no automated audit tool.
What is a criteria weight increment, and when should I use it?
Criteria weight increments are placeholder criteria you can add to a rule to give it a higher priority over other rules without adding a real field value. Each increment counts as one additional criterion in the evaluation order.
Use them when you have two rules that would otherwise have the same criteria count, and you want one to take priority. Important: the increment numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) are just identifiers - they don't add multiple weights. Using an increment of 7 still adds exactly one criterion to your rule's count.
Approval Types and Approval Rules
What's the difference between a hard and a soft approval?
Approval types fall into two categories:
Hard approvals (Approve/Reject): A rejection stops the request in its tracks - it does not move to the next step. An approval moves it forward (or closes the workflow if it's the final step). Your workflow must end on a hard approval.
Soft approvals (Recommend/Do Not Recommend; Record Input): A negative decision (Do Not Recommend) is recorded, but does not stop the request from moving forward. Record Input isn't really a decision at all - it's used as a notification step or a pause in the flow. You cannot end a workflow on a soft decision.
What does "Restrict to Owner" do on an approval type?
When this setting is enabled, only the assigned owner of the request is authorized to perform that approval step - even if multiple users are listed as eligible. It's a useful shortcut when ownership routing already handles person assignment, and you don't want to create separate approval types for each individual owner.
Can I use the same approval type more than once in a rule?
Yes. Adding the same approval type to a rule multiple times creates parallel steps - all eligible users for that type are notified, but only as many decisions are required as the number of times you added the step. The first users to complete their decisions satisfy the requirement; the remaining users are released from the task.
This is commonly used for committee or panel reviews where you want two (or more) reviewers from a pool to weigh in before the request moves forward.
Can approval rules be applied to impact reports?
Yes. Approval workflows can be applied to impact reports in addition to grant applications. This allows you to require review before an impact report is considered complete - including the ability to return it for additional detail, reject it, or approve it.
Dynamic Approvals
What are dynamic approvals, and what are the three types?
Dynamic approvals give you flexibility over who performs each step, rather than locking in a fixed set of reviewers at the rule level. There are three types:
1. Define Step: A designated user (often an admin) hand-selects the specific reviewers for each step when a request enters the workflow. The structure and order of steps stay fixed, but the people in those steps are chosen per request. Good for round-robin assignments or workload-based routing.
2. Approval Type Conditions: Eligibility conditions are applied to individual users within an approval type. For example, only Edwin is eligible when the funding principle is Community Development; only Julie when it's Education. All listed users are authorized in general, but conditions narrow who can act on a specific request.
3. Dynamic Approver Reference: Approver eligibility is driven by user-level attributes (Approver Roles) rather than rule-level criteria. Roles are defined in User Management > Approver Roles and assigned to individual users. This is the newest and least common option - best suited for organizations that want to manage approver eligibility at the user level rather than the rule level.
What arethe substitution, add, and remove settings on an approval type?
These settings are only relevant for dynamic approval rules. They control whether reviewers can be swapped out or added once a workflow is in progress:
Substitute: Swap the current reviewer for someone else with the same authority. Most commonly used.
Add: Add an additional reviewer to a step mid-process.
Remove: Remove a reviewer from a step. Use with caution - if you remove the only person assigned to a step, the workflow will stall with no one to complete it.
When a substitution occurs, both the outgoing and incoming reviewer receive an automated email notification (if the relevant email event is enabled).
Request Workflow Status
What is Request Workflow Status, and how is it different from disposition?
Disposition is the standard status of a request (Internal, Pending, Approved, Rejected). Request Workflow Status is a customizable sub-status layer that sits alongside disposition to give you more granular visibility into where a request stands in your process.
For example, a request might have a disposition of Pending but a Workflow Status of Under Review, Study Open, or Awaiting Signature - depending on what stage of your internal process it's in. You define the status values, and the system can update them automatically based on triggering events.
How do I set up automated triggering events for Request Workflow Status?
Triggering events are configured under Admin > Application Configuration > Workflow Events and Status. You can map a status change to events such as:
A request moving from one approval step to another
A disposition change (e.g., submitted externally, moved to pending, approved, rejected)
A date field being populated
A pick list field being populated
An impact report disposition change
An e-signature contract being fully executed
Each event can be mapped to a specific Request Workflow Status value, so the sub-status updates automatically as the request moves through your process.
Can I manually override Request Workflow Status?
Yes. You can manually change a request's Workflow Status from the request's Toolbox menu (Toolbox > Change Workflow Status). However, once you manually change the status, automated triggering events will no longer update it for that request. A yellow flag appears on the record to indicate that automation has been disabled for that request's status.
Can I create different Workflow Status pathways for different proposal types?
Yes. By default, all proposal types follow the same status event set. But you can create additional event sets and assign them to specific proposal types (via the proposal type configuration). This means a Sponsorship application and a Medical Education grant can each follow a completely different set of automated status transitions.
Employee Engagement Workflows
Where do I configure Employee Engagement approval workflows?
Employee Giving approval workflows are configured in the same place as Grants - Admin > Workflow Management - but the rules themselves live under different sections:
Employee Giving: All Employee Engagement workflows except Event Creation (including volunteerism, log hours, matching gifts, dollars for doers, sign-ups, etc.)
Events: Only for Event Creation proposal types - the actual events posted to your website.
Approval Types are shared across Grants and Employee Engagement - you can reuse the same approval types in both.
What is Auto-Disposition, and why is it recommended for Employee Giving?
Auto-Disposition automatically moves a gift to a specified status when it's submitted, bypassing the Internal status. Without it, the request owner has to manually submit each gift into the approval process - an extra step that adds administrative burden without meaningful value.
For grants, it's more common to review before pushing into a workflow. For Employee Engagement, auto-dispositioning to at least Pending is almost always the right call.
Common Auto-Disposition options:
Auto-Approve: Best for Credit Card and Payroll gifts. Eligibility rules handle compliance; no further review needed. (Note: even with Auto-Approve, include a manual approval step for internally created gifts, which don't auto-disposition.)
Auto-Pending: Best for Matching Gifts and other company-funded programs where you want a reviewer to confirm before approving.
Auto-Reject: Less common, but useful for filtering out ineligible gifts (e.g., religious organization gifts without a secular designation).
What are the Auto-Disposition options for Event workflows?
Event workflows have different Auto-Disposition options than standard Employee Engagement workflows:
Open: The event is immediately published to your website and available for sign-ups. Use this for trusted event creators (e.g., Event Managers).
Pending: The event is held for admin review before going live. Recommended if employees outside of a dedicated Event Manager role are allowed to post events.
You can create separate rules for different user types - for example, auto-open for Event Managers and auto-pending for general employees.
What does "Only apply this rule when an organization confirms a non-discrepant gift" mean?
This setting is relevant for Matching Gifts and Log Hours proposal types, where Organization Confirmation is used to validate the gift.
A discrepant gift is one where the amount the donor reported doesn't match what the organization confirmed. For example, a donor reports 40 hours volunteered, but the organization confirms 20. That's a discrepancy.
When this setting is checked, the auto-disposition only fires after the organization confirms the gift as non-discrepant. Until then, the gift stays Internal - because organizations can only confirm gifts while they're in Internal status.
If you use receipt review instead of organization confirmation, you don't need this setting. You can auto-disposition directly to Pending and review from there.
Can I use criteria to require Organization Confirmation for some gifts but not others?
No, not at this time. The requirement for an organization to confirm gifts is set at the Proposal Type level, not within the approval workflow. This means you cannot use approval workflow criteria to make confirmation required for some gifts within a proposal type and not others.
If you need some gifts to require confirmation and others not to, the most practical approach is to use separate proposal types - one configured with organization confirmation enabled, and one without.
Setting up organization confirmation involves several configuration areas beyond the workflow itself, including Donor Email Screens and External/Organization Proposal Sections, as well as email event 20001. Reach out to support for help with this setup.
Can I use criteria from the approval workflow to control whether gifts stay internal or go to nonprofit organizations?
Partially. You can use auto-disposition criteria to keep certain gifts in Internal status (by not auto-dispositioning them) and route others to Pending. However, whether a gift is emailed to a nonprofit organization is driven by the disposition status and organization confirmation settings - not directly by approval workflow criteria.
If the goal is to control nonprofit organization notification based on a yes/no employee answer, the configuration involves more than just the approval workflow. Reach out to support for guidance on how to structure this for your specific program.
How do I review Employee Giving gifts in bulk?
Use Batch Actions on the Employee Giving tab:
Go to the Employee Giving tab.
Use filters to narrow to the gifts you want to review (e.g., by proposal type, date range, or status).
Select individual gifts or click Select All.
Click Batch Actions > Review Gifts.
Make your decisions individually or use the bulk Approve/Reject options at the bottom, then click Save.
Tips: Use filters to exclude discrepant gifts before selecting all. Internally created gifts won't auto-disposition - you'll need to submit those into the approval process manually before making a decision on them. If a workflow has multiple steps, you can save after completing one step and return to the next.
Building Approval Workflows That Work for You -Our experts walk through ownership routing rules and how to build approval types and rules from scratch, including hard vs. soft decisions and multi-reviewer setups, then cover the employee engagement side - including Auto-Disposition options and event workflows.
Work Smarter, Not Harder: Advanced Approval Tactics -Our expert demos dynamic approval options - Define Step, Approval Type Conditions, and Dynamic Approver Reference — and walks through Request Workflow Status, showing how to build custom sub-status pathways that automatically update as requests move through your process.
