In early 2022, our PM team comes up with the groundbreaking feature in our workflow called 'Approvals.' This feature empowers brand members to submit their posts for review and get approval by the brand administrator prior to publish. This enhancement to our platform ensures a more controlled and collaborative approach to content management, fostering improved quality and compliance within the brand's digital presence.
Designing the feature end-to-end, working closely with engineers to Approvals experiences in detail.
Solo designer, 2 Product Manager, 7+ engineers.
August 2022 - May 2023
Rolled out in July 2023.
What does Zoho Social do?
Social is an Social media management app through which you can manage your all brands on social media. You can Schedule unlimited posts, monitor what matters, and create custom-reports to analyse your social media performance with Zoho Social.Social allows you to keep a close eye on what truly matters for your brand. You can monitor key performance indicators and track metrics that align with your specific social media goals.
In our Product, roles have been thoughtfully structured into four categories to cater to the diverse needs of our Clients.
With brands scaling rapidly, the absence of a structured approval system, combined with all roles having the ability to create and publish posts, resulted in inconsistencies in content and post quality. Our goal was to develop an efficient, user-friendly approval system to prevent miscommunication, reduce brand risks, and streamline the publishing process.
We kicked off the process with comprehensive user research to identify the need for the Approvals feature, collaborating closely with the product triad.
“As a Brand member in this brand, I frequently forget to add ALT text for images. I also prefer having someone review my content before it gets published, but it’s challenging for others to find time in their schedule to do so. Additionally, the app doesn’t provide a workflow to facilitate content review.”
“As a portal admin, we’re encountering issues with Duplicate posts from our brand members. While our social media following was smaller before, we now have a substantial audience. If we don’t address this, it could hurt the credibility of our brand.”
“In our brand, we typically draft posts a month ahead of the deadline and get approval from our portal admin before publishing. However, we’re facing issues—sometimes the portal admin doesn’t realize the post’s deadline is approaching and assumes there’s still time to review it. As a result, the post may miss its intended publish date”
“I’m a brand admin in this brand and I often struggle to track posts that are being published. Sometimes I consider tweaking a post, but someone from the marketing team publishes it directly from our drafts before I get the chance.”
Previously, every team member had the ability to Create and publish content on their own.
We have made it mandatory for the role of Brand member and limited publishers to send their posts to brand admin/Portal admin for approval and removed their access to publish.
The newly introduced Approvals tab allows brand approvers to view posts sent for approval. Here, they can easily review and either approve or request changes, ensuring content aligns with brand standards.
In the detailed view, approvers can thoroughly review posts and decide on the appropriate action—approve, reject, or place under review. This ensures all network-specific content parameters are considered.
When an approver (Brand/Portal admin) feels a post requires minor tweaks to make it more impactful, they can access the post activity, share their feedback with the Post author, and change the post status to ‘Under Review.’ This enables further discussion and ensures alignment before the post is finalized.
When rejecting a post, it’s essential to provide feedback, ensuring a more collaborative and transparent process among team members.
If the content meets your standards, you can approve and publish the post, scheduling it to go live at the most optimal time.
Even Approver (Brand/Portal admin) may sometimes require feedback on posts. In such cases, they can send posts for approval, fostering team collaboration and ensuring the content meets all necessary standards.
Potal admin and Brand admin can add approvers for their brand.
Even sometimes Admin/Approver post something where he/she even needs an evaluation from fellow employers so they can also send their post for approvals.
Separate tab for approvals notification to avoid confusion.
Admin can search the brand member from the list and add them as approver.
While approving there may be a case where a post time may be elapsed and some post may be Failed due to media violations.
A simple onboarding for approvals feature.
Since its launch in July 2023, the Approvals feature has drastically reduced publishing errors by 40% and improved overall team collaboration, allowing brands to manage their social media presence with more confidence and control.
The Approvals feature also saw high adoption rates, with over 80% of users engaging with it within the first month of its release. This demonstrated not only its ease of use but also its immediate relevance to user needs, significantly improving user satisfaction and workflow efficiency.
Continuous Improvement is Essential: The success of the Approvals feature showed how important it is to keep refining a product. Iterating based on user feedback ensured that the feature not only worked but fit naturally into their existing workflows.
Empowering Teams Leads to Better Outcomes: Giving approvers more control over the review process empowered them to make faster, more informed decisions. This not only improved content quality but also boosted team communication.
Listening to Users Matters: Engaging with users throughout the design process helped us understand their daily challenges. By incorporating their feedback, we built a feature that truly solved their pain points and made collaboration easier.
