Understand approval work after authority changes¶
An approval body can change while a request is waiting for decisions. Someone may leave, voting access may change, or the required number of decisions may be updated. Zerohive has a background process that revisits affected pending approval work after a qualifying authority-change notification.
Draft availability: this process exists in the inspected backend. It does not establish connected notifications, a delivered intervention screen or successful recovery in an environment. Use the approval guide for the inspected intended review journey and the governance guide for body administration. This page explains their background relationship.
What can change for a reviewer¶
The process reads the current eligible voting members for the relevant approval body. It can cancel open approval tasks and create replacement tasks for the refreshed decision set. A reviewer may therefore find that an earlier task is no longer actionable, even though the request still needs approval.
Before acting on an older notification or browser tab, open the current work and check the assigned task and decision history. Do not treat a cancelled approval task as a rejected request or create a new request to replace it. The original request can continue with refreshed approval routing.
Sequential approvals expose the next pending task; parallel approvals can expose several. Voting authority, signing authority and chairperson identity remain separate concepts. A change to the authority register does not itself cast a vote, sign a document or complete the request.
Earlier decisions and the refreshed requirement¶
Already resolved decisions remain recorded. The process replaces pending decision entries and can change the required count from the current rule and body information. The refreshed pending set should be reviewed alongside earlier decisions; do not assume that all decisions were erased, that the original task assignments remain valid or that a former approver can never receive another task.
The approval mode still matters. Some modes require every remaining decision, some can finish after one approval, and others use a required count. Read the approval explanation when interpreting an individual vote. Refreshing authority does not immediately evaluate all possible business outcomes or certify that the configured threshold can be reached.
When the workflow is suspended¶
If the process cannot resolve the necessary authority or workflow configuration, it can suspend the affected workflow for intervention. The affected approval's open tasks are cancelled and the workflow retains a reason identifying the unresolved approval. This protects the work from continuing with an unresolved assignment in that path.
Ask the responsible governance or process owner to resolve the stated condition. An authority update can allow a later qualifying refresh to resume the matching approval. It is not a promise that every update resumes every suspended workflow; a workflow suspended for another approval or reason needs its own resolution.
Delays or technical failures can also prevent the refresh from completing. A missing suspension message is not proof that refresh succeeded. The owner must verify current workflow state and the original authority change rather than infer success from a saved body alone.
Timing does not always start over¶
Replacement tasks can inherit existing timing obligations by their sequence position. Newly added positions can receive a fresh snapshot of the step's active timing policy. A replacement task therefore does not automatically grant a new full response period.
Authority suspension pauses supported timing obligations on open tasks. When matching work resumes, remaining business time is recalculated using the saved calendar; deadlines already reached before the pause are not moved forward by that calculation. This is not a blanket reset of every due date or legacy timing rule.
Use the recorded due and pause facts for the current task. Managers should explain the actual remaining work and deadline rather than promise a universal extension after reassignment.
Check a delayed or confusing change¶
| Observation | What to establish |
|---|---|
| A former reviewer still sees an old task | Whether the authority change reached the workflow and which current task remains actionable |
| A task was cancelled without a rejection | Whether refreshed approval routing created a replacement on the same request |
| Work is suspended | The specific approval and reason, the responsible owner and the condition needed for recovery |
| A replacement task has an earlier due date | Whether it inherited an existing obligation or received a new policy snapshot |
| A future membership date has arrived | Whether a qualifying refresh actually occurred; a future-dated change does not itself establish a scheduled wakeup |
| Another update appears to have no effect | Whether the current pending decisions and tasks were already equivalent, or the workflow was outside the refresh scope |
Give support the organization, body, request, approval/task reference, change time, visible reason and business impact. Preserve the original request and evidence while the owner reconciles the result. The governance recovery guide helps distinguish authority changes, saved work and reporting outcomes.