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Your coworker does most of its work without interrupting you. When something would leave your workspace or change your systems, it stops and asks.

The task genuinely stops and waits — as long as you take. Approve, and it carries straight on.

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What needs your yes

The default is straightforward, and worth knowing exactly:
Sends, changes, and deletions pause for your approval.
So reading, searching, analysing and drafting all happen freely. Sending the email, updating the record, deleting the row — those wait. A few things always ask, whatever else you’ve set:
  • Starting a conversation with a person — see Talking to people
  • Creating or changing one of your automations
  • Letting a dynamic workflow use one of your apps — once per run, before it starts
Handing work to another coworker, following up and stopping its work also ask, until you choose Always allow for each or a permission rule allows it.

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What an approval looks like

A card in the conversation showing what your coworker wants to do, before it does it. Not “may I send an email” — the actual recipient and what it wants to ask. A handover card is the exception. It shows your coworker’s one-line summary and what approving costs, not its full request. You approve, or you don’t. Declining isn’t a failure: your coworker carries on with the rest of the job and tells you what it skipped.
An Approval needed card headed Email orders@northwind.example to ask for the missing delivery date, with the action's tag, why it needs approval, and Decline, Always allow and Approve buttons

Not "may I send an email" — the actual recipient, what it wants to ask, and why it needs your approval.

While it waits, the task is paused. Nothing happens until you answer, however long that takes. One card works differently. When a dynamic workflow’s helpers need an app, you’re asked once, before anything runs, and your yes covers every helper in that run. That card has no Always allow, and the permission ends when the run does.

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A different kind of pause: being asked a question

Sometimes your coworker doesn’t want permission, it wants information. Which of two files is the current one. Whether an unusual figure is real. Which of three approaches you’d prefer. That’s a question card rather than an approval, and it’s a good sign — a coworker that asks is one that isn’t guessing on your behalf.
If a coworker asks the same question every time, the answer belongs in its instructions or a skill.

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Being asked less

Approving the same thing every day is a waste of your attention, and the fix isn’t to switch safety off.

Permission rules

Say once that a specific action is always fine, or always forbidden. The precise tool.

Standing permission

For handovers, choose Always allow once and your coworker stops asking. Follow-ups and stops ask separately.

Narrow the connection

Turn off the actions you never want. Nothing to approve if it can’t be done.

Switch a capability off

The blunt instrument, for capabilities a coworker genuinely doesn’t need.

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The three ways a person gets involved

Easy to confuse, so plainly:

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Common questions

The task waits. It doesn’t time out and act anyway, and it doesn’t fail — it sits there until you get to it.
Not a specific action before it exists, but a permission rule does exactly this for a whole class of action.
Tell your coworker immediately — it can often undo or follow up. This is the argument for reading the card rather than clicking through it.
No. Your coworker carries on with everything else and tells you what it couldn’t do.
Only where you’ve allowed it — with a permission rule, by granting standing permission, or by approving a dynamic workflow’s apps for one run. The default is to ask.

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Next steps

Permission rules

Decide once instead of every time.

Automatic checks

Rules that run without asking at all.

Connecting your apps

Control at the action level.

Talking to people

What always asks first.