Document approval in Bitrix24 is built with a business process using the "Document approval" action: requests, memos, orders, and contracts travel a route of approvers, and the system records who decided what and when. For HR documents with a legally significant signature there is electronic document management (КЭДО); for everything else there is the business process designer. Let's break down choosing a route, the approval sheet, deadlines with escalation, and approval in smart processes — where the requests live that have no "document" in the file sense.
Sequential, parallel, or mixed route?
The "Document approval" action supports both orders. Sequential — approvers receive the document one by one: legal → finance → director; the plus is that each sees the previous decision, the minus is that the total time equals the sum of the steps. Parallel — everyone receives it at once and the decision follows the vote threshold ("everyone", "anyone", "majority"); faster, but approvers don't see each other's remarks. A mixed route is assembled from several approval blocks: specialists in parallel first, executives sequentially after. The practical rule: expert checks (legal, accounting, security) run in parallel; authority decisions run sequentially and come last.
Where should approvers come from so the route doesn't break?
The worst option is names in the template: one person's vacation stops every order in the company. Take approvers from the structure: the Get employee manager robot returns the initiator's manager — one template serves any department; keep "department head" roles in process constants. Before the route starts, check completeness: Check if a field is filled — that a file is attached and the justification is filled in, Compound condition — for combinations (for an amount above the threshold, an attachment with an estimate is mandatory). A document with empty fields that reaches the director discredits the whole process.
How do you make an approval sheet?
The process log stores the decisions, but no one is going to open it — the approval sheet should live in the card. The technique: after each approval block, the process appends a line to an "Approval sheet" text field: who, decision, date, comment (the values come from the "Approval" action's results). By the end the card holds a ready-made history: "Legal, Ivanova — approved 10.06; CFO, Petrov — approved 11.06, remark: payment in two tranches". This same field is inserted into the document template — and the printable form comes out with its approval sheet already included.
How do you control deadlines and keep a document from stalling?
The "Approval" action has its own due date, but without escalation it simply expires. The working scheme: the control date is calculated by the Date + N working days robot — against the production calendar, so an order doesn't "burn" over the New Year holidays; a parallel branch waits for that date and, if there's no decision, sends a reminder to the approver and, a day later, to their manager (again Get employee manager). Silence must not be eternal: after the second escalation the process either auto-rejects with a return to the initiator, or moves the decision a level up — fix the rule in your regulations and in the scheme.
Approval in smart processes: when the document is a request
Requests for leave, a business trip, a purchase, or access are "documents" with no file, and their place is a smart process: a Kanban of "New → Under approval → Approved → Fulfilled" clearly shows the queue and the bottlenecks, while the approval business process launches at a stage. The request's fields are checked for completeness, the route depends on the type and amount, the approval sheet is written into the card — all the techniques above work unchanged. The smart process's bonus is reporting: how many requests are in progress, the average approval time, who is sitting on overdue ones.
In summary
Document approval = the right route order + approvers from the org structure + an approval sheet in the card + deadlines in working days with escalation. The bricks — manager by structure, completeness checks, working days — are in the Roboteka catalog: for free, in the business process designer next to the stock actions.