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Approval Workflows

Route any record through a multi-step approval chain. Configure per company, per model, per amount threshold — the engine handles routing, escalations, and approver lookup.

# Mark a model as approval-able
@api.model("blog.post", approval=True)
class BlogPost(DomainModel):
    title = fields.Char(required=True)
    body = fields.Text()

Once the model opts in, the web client renders an "Submit for approval" button on the form view; backend hooks block writes by anyone other than the current approver until the chain completes.

What you get

  • approval.rule — define an approval chain: which model, which trigger, which approvers, optional amount thresholds.
  • approval.request — a live approval-in-progress for one record.
  • approval.step — one step in the chain (sequential or parallel).
  • ApprovalService — methods: submit(), approve(), reject(), cancel(), delegate().
  • HTTP endpoints — POST /api/approvals/{id}/{action} for the four lifecycle verbs.
  • Web-client widgets — approval-bar in form view, "My Pending Approvals" inbox, audit-trail panel.

How to use it

Mark a model for approval

@api.model("expense.report", approval=True)
class ExpenseReport(DomainModel):
    amount = fields.Decimal(precision=12, scale=2, required=True)
    submitter_id = fields.Reference("res.user", required=True)

Setting approval=True makes the engine listen for the model's ede.create and ede.update events and consult the configured approval rules.

Define an approval rule

Approval rules are data, not code. Author them as XML in your app's data/:

<record id="rule_expense_over_5000" model="approval.rule">
    <field name="name">Expenses over $5,000</field>
    <field name="model_key">expense.report</field>
    <field name="trigger">on_submit</field>
    <field name="condition">amount &gt; 5000</field>
    <field name="step_ids" eval="[
        ('approval.step.line_manager',),
        ('approval.step.finance_head',),
    ]"/>
</record>

Submit programmatically

from ede.foundation.approval.services.approval_service import ApprovalService

req = ApprovalService.from_env(env).submit(
    record=expense,
    rule=env.models["approval.rule"].browse("rule_expense_over_5000"),
)

Act on a pending approval

ApprovalService.from_env(env).approve(req, note="Looks good")
# or
ApprovalService.from_env(env).reject(req, reason="Missing receipts")

How it composes with other features

  • Communication (Chatter) — every approval action posts to the record's chatter timeline.
  • Notifications — pending approvers get inbox + email pings.
  • Record Rules — only the current approver and the original submitter can read records mid-approval.

Reference

Concept Where it lives
Approval models src/ede/foundation/approval/models/
ApprovalService src/ede/foundation/approval/services/approval_service.py
HTTP API src/ede/foundation/approval/api/