Can we customize the approval workflow?

What you can configure

Per document type:

• Number of approval steps — typically 2-6; technically no hard limit.
• Step composition — which approvers are fixed (mandatory) vs variable (author chooses). Fixed approvers are typically Quality, Legal, Medical Director, etc. — roles that must always sign off on that document type.
• Approver sequencing — steps execute one at a time, in the order you define. No branching; no skipping; no parallel.
• PAdES signing steps — mark specific steps as DocuSign-signed (simple or advanced) when cryptographic binding is required.
• Document lock behavior — automatic check-out during the flow is on by default; for specific document types where continuous editing is valuable, it can be configured off.
• Rejection handling — whether rejection returns to the author for revision or halts the flow with no automatic return.

What we intentionally don’t support

• Parallel approval — multiple approvers notified simultaneously, all must approve. Harder to defend at audit because the “order of approvals” story becomes ambiguous.
• Any-of-N (“one Quality manager from the pool approves”). Weakens named-person attribution.
• State-based workflows — documents transitioning through states via multiple paths. Hard to reconstruct for auditors.
• Conditional skip — “skip Legal review if document value is under €10k.” Introduces policy exceptions into workflow that are hard to defend.

These omissions are deliberate. Every one of them is tempting to design for efficiency; every one weakens audit defensibility. Sequential-only is the compliance-safe pattern. See the approval workflows pillar guide for the full argument.

Practical implication

“Can we customize the approval workflow” usually gets a yes. The follow-up “can we have parallel approvers to speed things up” gets a principled no. If your current workflow depends on parallel or state-based patterns, the sequential migration is usually 20% slower per approval but produces meaningfully better audit evidence. For regulated contexts, the trade is almost always worth it.