How do approvals work in Pencil?

An approval record belongs to the item itself rather than to the place you review it from. A work item, generation, asset or template carries one approval status, one version history, one set of reviewers and one comment thread, and all of that follows the item wherever it appears. Adding the same item to several canvases does not create copies of it.

You can start a review from Files without adding the item to a canvas or a brief first. It works from the Works, Generations, Assets and Templates tabs.

The same menu carries Review, which opens the item's review view. You can also send items for review from a canvas or from a brief.

Review is where commenting, decisions and multi-item viewing happen. Comments and decisions attach to the item, so feedback stays with the work instead of living in whichever surface it was given from.

Guest reviewers let you bring in people from outside your workspace, so a client or partner can comment and sign off without a Pencil account.

Print and design files render in the review view. PDF, TIFF, PSD and AI files can be viewed and paged through without being downloaded or opened in another application.

From My approvals, a reviewer can open several items at once rather than working through them one at a time.

While an item is awaiting approval, anyone in your workspace can open it and leave a comment. Only the reviewers assigned to that item can record a decision on it.

Yes. An asset produced outside Pencil can be uploaded and taken through the same process as work created inside Pencil, from Files, a canvas or a brief, and in bulk.

Asset versions are handled on the asset itself. Upload a new version and the asset keeps its name, labels, properties and history, and you can promote an earlier version back to current.

Assets can also be added to a brief as deliverables, where they appear in My approvals alongside everything else awaiting your decision.