Summary: Depending on your proof permissions, you will complete your review either by selecting Complete Review or by making a Make decision.
If you are on the Pro, Business Legacy, or Enterprise edition, you have the option to customize your decisions. This feature allows you to modify the standard options to something more fitting for your workflow.
Please see the Custom Decision Labels article in our Help Center for further details.
Where is the feature applied? When you create a new proof, granting Approve permission will enable the reviewer to choose from the decision list.
When you create a new proof, granting Comment permissions will allow the user to select Review Complete action but not make a decision.
Features outlined in this article:
Completing review
(reviewers with comment rights only)
Comment-only reviewers will see the blue Complete review button in the top center of the Ziflow Viewer window, as shown below.
Once a reviewer chooses the Complete review option, other reviewers can see the action status change to Review complete within Proof Details. The Review complete status indicates that the reviewer has finished working on a proof.
If the proof has not been locked and is still under review, reviewers can revoke the Completed review action by clicking the Reviewing button.
These are review statuses that non-decision makers may see while working on a proof:
- the stage where the reviewer is added is still in progress, and the reviewer has not completed the review yet.
- the review has been completed, and no action is required from the reviewer.
Submitting decisions
(reviewers with approve rights)
A reviewer who has been granted the Approve rights will be able to see the blue Make decision button at the top of the Proof Viewer window.
When you click on the Make decision button, you are presented with the following options:
- if the proof has not been locked and is still under your review, you can revoke your prior decision by clicking the Decision pending button.
- selecting this option means that you are approving the proof in its current state.
- this option is used when you have some minor changes and don't require you to see a new version. (It's typically used when feedback is very minimal and will not have a big impact - eg. the reviewer requests a full stop and a capital letter to be added to a sentence).
- this option means that you need to see a new version of the proof once the changes have been made. 
- you can select this option if you feel the new proof is not relevant to you. - eg. You already approved the copy on version 1, yet another reviewer requests some visual changes. You'll be invited to review and approve version 2, but it's unnecessary because the changes in version 2 don't affect the copy you already approved in version 1.
Proof statuses
There are five different proof statuses that a proof can hold depending on based on reviewers' decisions:
In progress - proof review has not been finished yet. There is at least one proof stage where the decision-makers haven't submitted their decisions.
Approved - proof has been approved. It has met the necessary standards and criteria for approval. The decision-makers approved all stages inside the proof.
Approved with changes - proof has been generally accepted, but with some modifications or revisions required. There is at least one proof stage where an Approved with changes status has been calculated.
Changes required - proof has been declined. Specific areas or aspects of the proof need to be revised, corrected, or improved. These changes are usually outlined in comments/annotations provided by the reviewers. There is at least one proof stage where a Changes required status has been calculated.
Not relevant - signifies that the proof does not fit the specific requirements or objectives of the review and approval process. All proof stage statuses were calculated with the Not relevant option.
There are also three other proof statuses that proof creators may encounter while working in Ziflow:
Failed - this status indicates that the process of generating or submitting the proof has encountered an error or issue that prevented it from completing successfully. The file being processed might be corrupted, in the wrong format, or too large.
Uploading - this status indicates that the proof is currently being uploaded to the Ziflow platform.
Preparing - this status indicates that the system is currently preparing the proof for review or further processing.
What happens when reviewers make conflicting decisions on the same proof?
A stage may have one or more Decision-makers, so it's very important to understand how the decision process works and how Ziflow calculates multiple decisions made within the same stage.
Once the Decision-makers have submitted their decisions, the final status is calculated based on the following rules:
If at least one decision was set to Changes required the review stage decision will be set to Changes required.
If at least one decision was set to Approved with changes and nobody in the stage selected “Changes required” then the stage decision will be Approved with changes.
If at least one decision is Approved and nobody in the stage selected Changes required or Approved with changes, then the stage decision will be Approved.
If all decisions are set to Not relevant, then the stage decision will be Not relevant.
If the proof has not been locked, a reviewer can change a decision after the final decision has been made.
If a reviewer changes a decision while the proof is unlocked, the review stage and final decision are recalculated.
If a reviewer revokes the decision, the review stage status and proof status will change to In progress until the reviewer submits a new decision.
Please note that there is a special stage setting (Final Status Calculation) that allows a proof creator to decide when or by whom a final stage decision should be calculated.
Updating this setting from the All decisions position to another option changes the decision calculation logic. For example, if Only one decision is required option is selected, then stage status will be calculated based on the first reviewer who submits a decision.
Proof status calculation with no decision-makers:
The status calculation on a stage without any decision-makers is ignored, and the stage status will show as Completed once the reviewers click the Review complete button;
Stage lock is dependent on a stage setting shown below:
