Approver is a per-campaign permission to approve at signoff stages. It is assigned per-person, per-campaign, and lives independently of the workspace seat type the person holds. The Campaign Lead, an Internal Reviewer, or a Campaign Collaborator (Client) can all be Approvers on the same campaign.
Why per-campaign, not per-role
A workspace role describes what a person can do across the workspace. A per-campaign permission describes what a person can do on this one piece of work. These are not the same question.
A workspace Owner has the workspace role to do almost anything, but on a campaign for Client A they are not necessarily the right Approver. Maybe Client A’s brand owner is the right person, even though that person is a Campaign Collaborator who doesn’t hold a paid seat. A workspace Internal Reviewer can carry the Approver permission on Brand B’s launch campaign but not on Brand C’s, because B’s owner trusts them and C’s owner does not.
Splitting workspace roles from per-campaign permissions lets the system match the actual decision authority for each piece of work, rather than forcing every sign-off through a small set of workspace-level Owners.
Where approvals fire
Three stages carry Approver gates:
- Plan approval. Closes the Plan macro: Brief, references, named Directions signed off together.
- Concept review. Direction pick by the Client (signal, not formal approval).
- Final approval. The formal sign-off that closes the Ship macro and produces locked masters.
Each stage records the Approver, the timestamp, and the artifact state at approval time. The audit trail survives offboarding and role changes.
Related on this site
- /glossary/final-approval is the load-bearing approval stage.
- /glossary/campaign-collaborator is the role that often holds Approver on agency client work.
- /glossary/plan-make-ship is the macro arc the approvals fire within.