HeyOrca’s approval tools help teams and clients review content efficiently. This article walks through how approval notifications and reminders work, and how to use them for both internal and external approval workflows.
Post approval notifications
Approval notifications alert users when a post is awaiting their approval. To receive Awaiting approval notifications, notifications must be turned on in Notification settings. You can update settings for your team and clients, or they can update their own settings.
Users can receive approval notifications when:
A post is set to Anyone can approve
They are selected as an approver on a post
Enable notifications for a user
Navigate to Organizational settings.
Find the user you want to update.
Click the gear icon next to their name.
Select Notification settings.
Choose a notification frequency:
Off
Live (notified as soon as they’re selected as an approver or when a post is awaiting approval)
Hourly (every hour)
Daily (once per day)
Save your changes.
This feature can also be adjusted by each team member (except External Stakeholders) via the Notifications Settings page in their personal HeyOrca account.
⚠️ External Stakeholders do not have a login and will not be able to edit their notifications. Their settings must be managed by your internal team using these steps.
Post approval reminders
Approval reminders are follow-up notifications sent when a post is still awaiting approval as it gets closer to its scheduled publish time.
Turn on approval reminders for yourself
Use this if you want to receive reminders for approvals on a specific calendar.
Go to Notification settings.
Select the workspace you want to manage reminders for.
Enable Approval reminders.
Save your changes.
Set approval reminders for team members and clients
Use this to control who receives approval reminders and when they’re sent.
Go to Calendar settings for the calendar you want to manage.
Select the Reminders tab.
Find the list of users.
Select the checkbox next to each user who should receive approval reminders.
Choose a reminder timing:
24 hours
3 days
7 days
Save your changes.
The reminder timing determines how far in advance of the scheduled publish time a reminder is sent if the post is still awaiting approval.
For example:
A 24-hour reminder sends an email one day before publishing
A 3-day reminder sends an email three days before publishing
Each selected user receives an email with a link to the posts that still need approval.
⚠️ Approval reminders are only sent for posts that are still awaiting approval. Once a post is approved, reminders stop.
Internal approvals
Internal approvals help your team review content before it’s shared with clients. This ensures posts are finalized internally before moving forward in the approval process.
Use Awaiting approval for internal review
Use this option when your team reviews content before it’s sent to clients.
Create your post and add content.
Share the post with a team member using a shareable link.
Once reviewed, move the post from Draft to Awaiting approval.
Moving a post to Awaiting approval signals that internal review is complete and the post is ready for client sign-off. It also provides a clear visual indicator of content moving through the review process.
External approvals
External approvals in HeyOrca
External approvals are designed to make reviewing content simple for clients, without requiring them to log in to HeyOrca.
How external approvals work
Send your client a shareable link to the content that needs review (via email, Slack, or another channel).
When the client opens the link, they’ll see a welcome page and select their name.
After selecting their name, they’re taken to either Month view or Day view, depending on how the link was generated. (Clients can switch between views, but the initial view is determined by how the link was created.)
Review and approve content as a client
As long as a post is in Awaiting approval, external stakeholders can:
Approve or reject the post
Leave comments with feedback
If a client @mentions a team member in a comment, that team member receives an email notification that the post needs attention.
Notifications for external stakeholders
External stakeholders do not receive notifications by default as they do not have logins or passwords in HeyOrca.
They can and will receive email notifications if:
They are tagged using @everyone in the post comments, or
They reply to a comment or leave a general comment on a post
Once they comment, they’ll continue receiving notifications for future comments on that post.