Announcing human-in-the-loop and multi-step sequential approvals

Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends
August 31, 2026 | August 31, 2026 | September 9, 2026

Zendesk is pleased to announce two new capabilities for approvals: automated human-in-the-loop approval processes and multiple sequential approval requests on a ticket.

This announcement includes the following topics:

What is changing?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

What do I need to do?

What is changing?

With this release, admins can create two new kinds of approval workflows.

Human-in-the-loop approvals in action flows

Admins can create action flows that send approval requests, pause until a response is received, and then resume automatically following steps based on the response. This is referred to as human-in-the-loop automated approval requests. This allows automated workflows to mirror complex organizational logic, ensuring that critical approval decisions are made by the right stakeholders before the process continues. For example, pausing an automated onboarding process until the appropriate stakeholder approves the request and allows onboarding to continue.

As with all approval requests generated through action flows, you can specify a single individual or use variables to define who the approver should be for automatically-generated approval request in cases where it's dynamic. Variables come from previous steps in an acton flow, such as looking up a user and retrieving their manager's ID.

Multi-step sequential approvals

Multiple, sequential approval requests are also possible now. This can be automated through action flows, using multiple send approval request steps configured to wait for a response, as described above, or manually within the Agent Workspace by creating multiple approval requests to a ticket after the previous one is completed. Multiple approval requests allow teams to build sequential approval workflows for more complex processes, and they reduce the manual effort required to follow-up and hand-off tickets.

For example, service teams can automate procurement processes and enable multiple approvers across finance and IT organizations to make a decision before a final vendor contract agreement is assigned.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

Zendesk has heard your feedback on end-to-end automations needing to wait for approval requests to complete and to have multiple approvals in the same workflow. The functionality in this release is designed for approval workflows that accurately align with actual operational procedures, ensuring decisions are made by the appropriate stakeholders at the optimal time in the process.

Benefits include:

Automation: Now, a single action flow can cover end-to-end business processes, such as onboarding, expense reimbursement, and contract reviews.

Waiting for approval response: Allows end-to-end action flows to wait, and then continue based on the approver's decision.

Multiple, sequential approvals: Allows complex approval steps within a single action flow.

What do I need to do?

This enhancements are available to all accounts with access to action flows and approval requests. To get started, you can create or update action flows to include the Send approval request step and configure the step's behavior to Continue immediately or Wait for a response.

Existing action flows with a Send approval request step default to continuing immediately. If you want to change this to a human-in-the-loop workflow, edit the step's behavior to wait for a response. All new Send approval request steps default to waiting for a response.

For more information, see Creating human-in-the-loop automated approval workflows.

If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.