Approval Requests

What it solves

In a collaborative environment, multiple team members may be creating or updating rules, attribute settings, and search language settings at the same time. Without a review process, an incorrect configuration or accidental change could go live immediately and affect shoppers.

Approval Requests adds a review step before changes are published. When someone submits a change, it appears in a shared review queue where an authorized reviewer can:

• Compare the current version with the proposed version
• Approve the change
• Reject the change and send it back for updates

Nothing becomes active until a reviewer approves it.

When to use it

Use Approval Requests when:

• Multiple people manage search rules or search settings
• You want changes reviewed before they go live
• You need a record of who submitted, reviewed, and approved changes
• You want to catch mistakes before they affect shoppers
• Your site handles high traffic and configuration mistakes could impact business performance

Key concepts

Pending Approvals

The shared review queue for submitted changes waiting for approval. Every Create, Update, or Remove request appears here with a status of Under Revision, meaning the request has been submitted and is awaiting review, until it is approved or rejected.

Entity Type

Shows what kind of item was changed. Supported entity types include:

• Rule — recommendation or search rules
• Attribute Config — settings for searchable or filterable attributes
• Linguistic Override — custom search term mappings

The filter tabs at the top of the page update automatically based on the types of requests currently in the queue.

Change Type

Shows what action was requested:

• Create — adds a new item
• Update — edits an existing item
• Remove — deletes an item

Request Review

The review page for a pending request. This page displays two panels side by side:

• Before Change — the current live version
• After Change — the proposed version

Special cases:

• New items display: "This Rule did not exist before."
• Deleted items display: "This Rule has been removed."

Approval History

The history page for completed reviews. This view includes:

• Approved requests
• Rejected requests
• Requests with errors
• Requests still under review

A Reviewed By column shows who made the final decision.

My Request History

A personal view showing only requests submitted by the currently logged-in user. If no requests have been submitted yet, the page displays: "No Request History Yet."

Once requests are processed, users can track their status here without searching through the shared queue.

How it works

Use the left sidebar to quickly access Approval Requests. Click the thumbs-up icon to open a menu with direct links to:

• Pending Approvals
• Approval History
• My Request History

You can go directly to the page you need without returning to the home screen.

Quick example

A merchandiser creates a new redirect rule named google that sends shoppers searching for "google" to an external page.

The request appears in Pending Approvals with:

• Change Type: Create
• Status: Under Revision

A reviewer opens the queue from the left sidebar and clicks the eye icon for the request. The review page shows:

• Before Change: "This Rule did not exist before."
• After Change: A new rule with a Trigger phrase of google, Match type Exact, Action type Redirect, and a Destination URL.

After confirming the configuration is correct, the reviewer clicks Approve. The rule becomes active immediately, and the request moves to Approval History with a green Approved status and the reviewer's email listed in the Reviewed By column.

Related pages

• Discovery Rules — rules that go through the approval queue before going live
• Linguistic Override — search term mappings reviewed via the same flow
• Configurations — attribute settings changes also require approval
• User Management — control who can submit and approve requests