After a two-year beta period
Google Docs serves as an excellent tool for multiple people to work together in a single document, offering plenty of tools made with collaboration in mind. In 2019, Docs gained a new feature that allowed users to request approval on a document from others within an organization. While it has been available in beta, it never actually arrived as a stable option. That’s changing today, as Google is rolling out this feature more widely.
Starting this week, business users can request approval in their documents from higher-ups without needing to sign up for a beta, whether it’s a contract, a legal form, or any other kind of document. Those approvers can approve or reject submissions, add feedback, and edit the article. Once all reviewers have approved the file, it’s locked to prevent changes. If an article is unlocked and changed post-approval, it’ll need to be re-approved. For many, this is the first they’ll be able to try out these requests. Google closed the beta way back on April 13th, 2020, yet the feature had yet to see a wider rollout before now.
Once you request document approval from someone, Docs will notify your recipients via email. As with the initial beta version, you can also set a due date for approval. It should in handy for business users on Google Workspace, especially those working in legal departments.
The admin setting started rolling out to everyone on November 8th, though it could take up to 2 weeks for it to show up for all accounts. As for end-users, you can expect to start using it on November 15th, with a gradual rollout following over the next few weeks. This tool is only available for Workspace and G Suite accounts within an organization, so personal accounts will have to keep waiting. Although Google is enabling this by default, if you’re an admin and don’t need the feature for your organization, it’s easy to turn off.
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