ApproveThis manages your OneDesk approvals.

Let’s cut to the chase: approvals suck. They’re the traffic jam in your workflow highway, the "waiting on Karen from accounting" meme of business operations. But what if you could make approvals actually… work? Like, automatically? That’s where slapping together OneDesk and ApproveThis through Zapier comes in. No PhD in "process optimization" required.

Why OneDesk + ApproveThis = Fewer Meetings About Meetings

OneDesk’s great at juggling tasks, projects, and customer tickets. ApproveThis? It’s the bouncer at the club of your business processes – only letting through what’s legit. Together, they turn "Hey, can you approve this?" chaos into a silent, self-running machine.

Here’s the kicker: ApproveThis doesn’t make your approvers learn Yet Another Software. They can approve via email like normal humans. Even better – external clients or contractors don’t need a OneDesk license to greenlight stuff. No more paying for zombie accounts that only get used twice a year.

Three Ways This Combo Saves Your Team From Itself

1. No More "I Didn’t See the Task" Excuses

Picture this: your support team gets a feature request in OneDesk that needs product team approval. Normally, this would involve 3 Slack pings, a missed Jira ticket, and a passive-aggressive email. Instead, Zapier automatically fires the request to ApproveThis. The product lead gets an email, clicks approve, and OneDesk auto-updates the ticket. Done before anyone can schedule a "alignment sync."

Real-world win: A mid-sized SaaS company cut feature request turnaround from 5 days to 8 hours. Their product team now spends 60% less time herding feedback.

2. Approval Paper Trails That Don’t Require a Detective

When ApproveThis approves a budget request, it automatically slaps that approval stamp on the corresponding OneDesk project. No more digging through email chains when auditors come knocking. Finance teams get automatic thresholds – anything under $5k auto-approves, over that escalates. Procurement teams can set vendor approval chains where Legal gets looped in only when absolutely necessary.

Pro tip: Use Calculated Fields in ApproveThis to auto-flag requests that exceed department budgets. Pair it with OneDesk’s time tracking to automatically reject overtime requests that’d blow project margins.

3. The "Your Manager’s on PTO" Problem – Solved

We’ve all been there – urgent request, key approver’s sipping margaritas in Bali. ApproveThis’ vacation delegation automatically reroutes approvals to the backup person. When they approve, OneDesk updates the task status and notifies the requester. No more holding your project hostage because someone didn’t set an out-of-office properly.

Setting This Up Without Losing Your Mind

If you can set up a Netflix account, you can do this:

1. Grab your Zapier account (free tier works)
2. Pick your trigger in OneDesk – new task, ticket update, whatever
3. Connect ApproveThis as the action – set approval rules once
4. Test with a real request (protip: make the first test "approve team lunch")

Total setup time: Less than it takes to get through your podcast backlog during commute.

Who Actually Benefits From This Wizardry?

Project Managers: Stop being the human router between Jira and email approvals. Automatically gate tasks until stakeholders approve specs.

Support Teams: Escalate premium support requests that need manager approval without leaving OneDesk. SLAs met, customers happy.

Operations: Procurement requests auto-route based on cost centers. Vendor contracts get Legal’s eyes only when clauses change.

Finance: Expense reports flow from OneDesk tasks to ApproveThis thresholds. Anything fishy gets flagged before it hits QuickBooks.

The "Yeah, But…" Section

“We have custom approval rules!” – Cool, ApproveThis handles nested approvals with conditional logic. Department head → CFO → Legal, only when necessary.

“Our clients won’t learn new software!” – They don’t have to. Approvers get normal emails. Click approve, done. No logins, no passwords, no training.

“What if someone rejects a request?” – OneDesk tasks auto-update with rejection reasons. The requester gets notified to fix it – without 15 forward/reply-all emails.

This Isn’t Just About Saving Clicks

It’s about killing the approval black hole. When a marketing agency started using this setup:

• Client content approvals went from 72 hours to 4 hours average
• 87% fewer “Did you get my approval request?” support tickets
• Project managers regained 11 hours/week previously spent chasing approvals

Their secret sauce? Auto-escalating urgent requests after 2 hours of no response. Basic feature in ApproveThis, game-changer in reality.

Ready to Stop Being a Human Approval Router?

Here’s your play:

1. Snag an ApproveThis trial (takes 2 minutes)
2. Connect it to your OneDesk via Zapier
3. Automate one approval process this week

Worst case? You save 3 hours weekly. Best case? You finally get to focus on work that matters instead of being a glorified notification system.

Pro tip: Start with your most annoying approval process – the one that makes you want to throw your laptop. Fix that first. The schadenfreude alone is worth it.