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Creating an Approval Pack

An Approval Pack is how you deliver the result of a project to its participants — a frozen, shareable bundle of the documents you've approved. This guide walks through creating and sharing one.

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Creating, retracting, and emailing approval packs are approver / co-approver operations on a specific project. Applicants and collaborators can view packs but cannot create or modify them.

1. Open the project's Approval Packs page​

From the project, open Approval Packs. You'll see any existing packs plus a button to create a new one.

2. Start a new pack​

Click Create Approval Pack. A two-pane view opens:

  • Left: the pack form
  • Right: a live preview of what recipients will see

3. (Optional) Start from a template​

If your project type has an Approval Pack Template attached, pick it from the template selector to pre-fill the heading, body, and default document sets. You can still change anything after the template is applied.

4. Write the heading and body​

  • Heading is the big text at the top of the pack page — e.g. "Approval Granted" or "Congratulations".
  • Body is the message shown below the heading. Keep it short and factual: recipients will see it before they look at the documents.

Both fields support plain text.

5. Add project documents​

Project documents are the deliverables you (the approver) produced — the certificate, the stamped drawings, any cover letters. Pick which of the project's project documents should be included in the pack.

Drag handles let you reorder the documents. Recipients see them in the order you set here.

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Each selected project document is rendered from its template at pack-creation time and frozen as a PDF inside the pack. ApprovIQ fills in the template's merge fields — project information fields, approval list items, document set contents — from the project's current state, then stores the result as a snapshot. Make sure any unsaved template edits are saved before you click Create.

6. Add received documents via document sets​

Received documents are grouped into the pack by their document set. For each document set:

  1. Tick the set to include it.
  2. Optionally override the set's description for this particular pack. The override is local to the pack — the project's live document-set description is unchanged.
  3. Pick which documents from the set to include — typically all of them, but you can exclude any that aren't relevant to this delivery.
  4. Drag sets up or down to control the order they appear in the pack.

The set's name is frozen into the pack at creation time, so renaming the set on the project later does not change what the pack displays. Received documents themselves are referenced live from the project — any staged or in-progress uploads should be settled before you create the pack.

The live preview updates as you make changes.

7. Save​

Save the pack. ApprovIQ renders each selected project document from its template, exports it as PDF, and stores those PDFs as pack-local snapshots. The received documents are linked in by reference with their frozen set name and (optional) description override. See How project documents and document sets flow into a pack for the full detail.

8. Share​

Every pack has a unique public share link. Open the pack to:

  • Copy link — copy the public URL and paste it into an email, Teams message, or wherever works.
  • Open link — open the recipient view in a new tab to verify it looks the way you want.
  • Email participants — send the link directly from the pack to the project's participants.

The public link works without login, so anyone you forward it to can view the pack.

Retracting a pack​

If something goes wrong — wrong document included, a late correction, anything — use Retract on the pack. Retracted packs return a "no longer available" page at the public link until you restore them. Retracting never deletes the pack; you can see its state on the project at any time.

Creating more packs​

Projects can have any number of packs. A common pattern is one pack per stage, or one pack per reviewing body. Each is independent — editing one does not affect others.