ApproveThis manages your Rootly Integration approvals.

When Approval Workflows Meet Incident Management

Let’s be real – nothing kills momentum like waiting for someone to click “approve” while your systems are melting down. Rootly handles the firefighting, and ApproveThis handles the paperwork. Together, they make sure your incident response isn’t stuck in committee hell. No more Slack pings, forwarded emails, or rogue Excel sheets. Just decisions getting made where they should: automatically when possible, human-approved when necessary.

For companies running SaaS, fintech, or anything where uptime matters, this integration turns approval bottlenecks into guardrails. DevOps teams keep moving fast without breaking things. Finance teams sleep better knowing big spending triggers get reviewed. And everyone stops wasting time herding cats for sign-offs.

What Each Tool Does Best

ApproveThis: The Approval Nerve Center

ApproveThis isn’t another inbox clogger. It’s where approval processes go to actually work. You set rules for who needs to sign off on what – dollar thresholds, department heads, legal reviews – and it routes requests automatically. Key features like vacation delegation and approval thresholds mean requests don’t gather dust because someone’s OOO or the amount’s under limit.

The killer detail? Approvers don’t need licenses for your other tools. Client needs to greenlight a contract? Vendor waiting on a PO? Send them an email approval link instead of a software license request form.

Rootly: Incident Management That Doesn’t Suck

Rootly automates the incident response playbook – think war rooms without the chaos. When alerts fire, it coordinates comms, runs post-mortems, and keeps stakeholders updated. For teams managing cloud infrastructure, customer-facing apps, or anything where downtime costs real money, it’s the difference between “We’re on it” and “Why wasn’t this fixed yesterday?”

Four Ways This Combo Actually Works

1. Auto-Create Approvals for Critical Alerts

How it works: Rootly detects an alert → ApproveThis routes it to the right approver(s) based on severity, cost, or team.

Real-world use: A SaaS company gets a server capacity alert. Instead of DevOps guessing whether to spin up $5K/month in extra cloud hosting, ApproveThis routes the decision to engineering leadership with cost projections attached. Approval happens in 10 minutes via email – no logins, no meetings.

2. Escalate Incidents with Budget Approvals

How it works: Major incident declared in Rootly → Approval request auto-generated with estimated remediation costs.

Real-world use: Fintech app goes down during trading hours. The fix requires third-party support costing $15K. ApproveThis routes the spend request to CFO and CTO in parallel – either can approve to unblock the team. Time-to-resolution drops from 4 hours to 90 minutes.

3. Track Approvals as Operational Events

How it works: New approval request in ApproveThis → Rootly creates a pulse event to timeline the incident.

Real-world use: E-commerce platform’s checkout system slows. Approval request for emergency scaling gets logged as a Rootly pulse. Post-mortem shows exactly how long approvals took versus actual fix time – helps optimize processes next quarter.

4. Audit Trail for Every Decision

How it works: Request approved/denied in ApproveThis → Rootly logs it as an incident timeline entry.

Real-world use: Healthcare app’s compliance team denies a hotfix approval due to HIPAA concerns. Rootly documents the decision with timestamps and comments – crucial for regulators asking “Why wasn’t this pushed faster?”

Setting This Up Without Losing a Day

Connect via Zapier in three steps:

1. Pick your trigger: In Zapier, choose Rootly events (new alert/incident) or ApproveThis outcomes (request approved/denied).
2. Map the data: Attach critical details – incident severity, cost estimates, approver groups – using Zapier’s field mapping.
3. Test with cheap mistakes: Run a $10 test approval or low-severity incident. Better to catch issues now than during a real fire.

Pro tip: Use ApproveThis’ calculated fields to auto-include cost/time estimates in approval requests. No more manual math.

Who Actually Benefits?

DevOps/SRE Teams

Approvals become part of the incident playbook – not a sidebar conversation. Escalate spending or third-party engagements without leaving Rootly’s interface. Mean time to resolution (MTTR) drops because you’re not waiting on CFOs to check their inbox.

Finance & Procurement

Every cloud spend approval, vendor contract, or emergency purchase gets logged with context. No more surprise bills – you see the incident details that justified the cost. Plus, threshold rules auto-approve small spends that aren’t worth your time.

Compliance & Legal

Change approvals get tied to specific incidents with full audit trails. Demonstrate due diligence without compiling spreadsheets. Plus, external counsel can approve NDAs or contracts via email without getting added to your Rootly account.

Why This Isn’t Just Another Integration

Most app integrations just shuffle data. This one actually changes how decisions get made:

• No approval black holes: Vacation delegation and escalation rules mean someone always acts.
• Context matters: Approvers see incident details, not just a “Approve $20K?” email.
• Two-way logging: Rootly shows why decisions took time; ApproveThis proves they followed policy.

Example: A cybersecurity firm uses approval thresholds to auto-greenlight <$5K incident spends. Anything higher requires CISO review. Result? 80% of approvals happen instantly; 20% get human eyes within SLA.

Getting Started (Without Overcomplicating It)

Pick one process to automate first:

For Rootly-heavy teams: Start with auto-approving minor incident spends. Set a $1K threshold – anything below that auto-approves; above routes to engineering leads.

For ApproveThis power users: Trigger Rootly status pages when high-priority requests get approved. Keep customers updated without manual ops.

Either way, use ApproveThis’ free trial and Rootly’s developer plan to test the workflow. No budget requests needed.

The Bottom Line

Companies using ApproveThis + Rootly typically cut approval delays by 60-75% on critical incidents. That’s hours saved per major outage – which adds up fast when your uptime SLA is 99.9%.

But the real win isn’t speed. It’s knowing that every dollar spent during an incident was necessary, every compliance box got checked, and no one’s stuck babysitting approval requests.

Book a demo to see how approval workflows can actually keep up with your ops team. Or start a free trial and connect Rootly yourself in 20 minutes. Your future post-mortem reports will thank you.