Proposals & Approvals
How every change is proposed, reviewed and approved before it reaches a register.
10 min read9 sectionsAll roles (approving and rejecting is owners and admins only)
Proposals are how changes reach your registers. New records, edits, status changes, reviews and imports are filed as proposals and wait in the queue until an owner or admin approves them. Use this guide to follow a change from submission to approval, and to review changes other people have proposed.
One person proposes a change; a second person with authority approves it before anything is saved.
When you submit a change, ShelfGRC files it as a proposal and takes you to its page. Nothing in the register changes until an owner or admin approves it; rejecting it discards the change.
Proposal statuses
- Pending
Waiting for a decision.
- Approved
The change has been written to the register.
- Rejected
The change was discarded. Nothing in the register changed.
Almost every change to register content is proposed first; a few owner and admin actions save directly.
New records
Click New in the top bar (or a register's own new-record button), fill in the form, then Submit (propose) and Submit to Queue. If you close the form after typing something, ShelfGRC asks Discard changes? — Keep editing takes you back with your entries intact, and Discard clears the form. Your browser's Back button asks the same while the form is open.
Edits
Click Propose Update on a record, make your changes, then Submit Update (propose) and Submit to Queue. If you close the form after changing something, ShelfGRC asks Discard changes? — Keep editing takes you back with your changes intact. Your browser's Back button asks the same while the form is open.
AI Fill Form
The assistant beside the New form can fill fields for you. You still check them and submit the form as a proposal.
Obligation status
An obligation's Status button opens Update Compliance Status. Submit for Review files a proposal; approval records the new status and the attestation date.
Policy reviews
Record Review on a policy files a proposal carrying the review dates.
Uploads and imports
Evidence and policy uploads, and spreadsheet imports from Uploads (Submit for Review), each become one proposal.
Incident reports
Converting a report from the public incident reporting form creates a proposal for the new incident.
Make your own
Copying a record shared into your units files a proposal for the new copy.
Open Proposals from the sidebar to see every proposal you are allowed to view.
Queue columns
- Title
What the change is, with an icon for the kind of record.
- Category
Risk, Control, Evidence, Incident, Obligation, Policy or Upload. Some proposal types show Other.
- Created
When the proposal was submitted.
- Severity
In your organisation's severity labels: an incident's own severity, or the rating a risk will have once approved (residual where the proposal rates it, otherwise inherent). Imports and records without a severity show a dash.
- Status
Pending, Approved or Rejected. A pending proposal that has escalated also shows Escalated · L1, L2 and so on — see Escalation.
- Review
Opens the proposal's own page. Shown on pending rows only.
Search proposals... matches on title, and the status filter (All, Pending, Approved, Rejected) narrows the list. Pending proposals sort first, highest severity then newest. Click any row to expand it and see the full change. The queue refreshes every 30 seconds.
A proposal's page shows exactly what approval will write.
On the proposal page
- Header
Title, record kind and status, plus Self-approved if the author approved it.
- Escalation line
On a pending proposal, how far it has escalated and when it next will — for example Awaiting approval · escalation level 1 of 3 · next escalation in 20h.
- Changes
The diff card, described below.
- Details
Type, Created, Severity and, where the proposal carries one, Confidence.
For a new record the diff card lists every field under New record. For an edit it shows Before and After side by side, for changed fields only: an arrow marks a changed value, a plus an added one and a minus a removed one. A risk proposal adds Inherent Risk Rating and Residual Risk Rating rows in your organisation's severity labels.
Owners and admins decide pending proposals from the proposal's page.
- 1
Open the proposal
Click Review in the queue, or Open on a Pending approval or Assigned to you item in the Dashboard's My actions.
- 2
Check the change
Read the diff card. For an import, check every row and remove any you do not want first — see Bulk proposals from imports.
- 3
Click Approve or Reject
The buttons sit at the top right. Members see Only Admins and Owners can approve or reject proposals. instead.
- 4
Click Confirm
Approve proposal? warns that the change is applied immediately; Reject proposal? confirms nothing will change. You then return to the queue.
Approval depends on your role, the org units the proposal touches, and your sensitivity access.
- Role
Owners and admins only. Members can create proposals but not decide them.
- Org units
An admin sees, and can decide, a proposal only if they can see every org unit it touches: the record's current unit, the unit it would move to, and any unit it would be shared into. A proposal naming no unit — such as an import with no business unit — needs whole-business access. Owners see the whole organisation.
- Sensitivity
A proposal with Confidential or Privileged content, or one that makes a record Highly sensitive, is hidden from anyone without that access, and they cannot approve it.
- Your own proposals
You can approve your own by default; the proposal is then badged Self-approved. If Require second approver is on, someone else must approve it.
A spreadsheet import arrives as one proposal holding every row.
The diff card shows how many records will be imported, the business unit applied to all rows (if chosen), an expandable Column mapping and any notes. Each row shows its title, ratings and mapped fields, with values that will be adjusted on import flagged. See the Uploads guide for preparing the file.
- 1
Check the mapping
Open Column mapping and confirm each field came from the right column. A shifted column is the most common import mistake.
- 2
Remove bad rows
Click the bin icon beside a row. The removal is saved to the proposal straight away. Rows can be removed but not edited — fix a wrong value by uploading again, or edit the record after approval.
- 3
Approve
A message reports how many rows were created, skipped and coerced. An Import outcome card stays on the proposal with the details.
Proposals left undecided are escalated up your hierarchy by email and in-app notification.
Escalation tiers
- Urgent
The proposal's severity — an incident's severity, a risk's rating or a treatment plan's priority — is in your High band or above. Escalates one level for every day it waits.
- Standard
Everything else, including imports. Escalates one level for every seven days it waits.
An hourly check notifies the approvers closest to the record — the admins assigned nearest its org unit — with Proposal awaiting your approval. Each time the tier's window passes undecided, the next group up the hierarchy is added (Escalated: …), ending with the owners. Everyone already notified stays on the list. Notifications stop once the proposal is approved or rejected.
A record shared into your units from elsewhere can be copied into a record your units own.
A record shared with your unit still belongs to its owning unit, and updates to it are decided by approvers who can see that unit. For your own version, use Make your own on the record's page.
- 1
Open the shared record
The button appears only on risks, controls, obligations, incidents and treatment plans shared into your units from a unit you do not hold.
- 2
Click Make your own
The ordinary New form opens, pre-filled from the shared record.
- 3
Edit the copy
Change anything you need and choose its business unit. The copy gets its own key when approved, does not copy the original's links, and an obligation copy starts at Not Assessed.
- 4
Submit it
Click Submit (propose). The copy goes through the queue like any new record; the original is not changed.