Working with approvals and notifications

In real-world software deployments, approvals and notifications help to ensure that everyone who’s responsible for any portion of a workflow has responded appropriately to steps that require gatekeeping or other oversight.

Approvals ensure that the mobile app binary is deployed in an orderly fashion, with accountability, so that an app is not deployed into production until they’ve passed all required testing and reviews. Notification emails can help to keep the rest of the team informed as an app progresses through its lifecycle, without forcing them to log into the Blue Cedar Platform unless they need to take specific actions. If an automated workflow step is unsuccessful, for example an app integration step fails in Blue Cedar, notifications can point to logs and reporting that can help to debug the issue that caused the app to fail.

Notifications can also help to resume stalled workflows that result from discontinuities between teams or handoff points. For example, if someone doesn't approve a release because they’re on vacation and the rest of the team can’t contact them, that workflow can stall unless someone else with the same privileges can step in. With a manual process, there’s no clear tracking or reminders if an individual team member isn’t responding.

You can add multiple users to approvals and notifications, if you want everyone on a certain team to be informed of current progress during an app deployment.

• Notifications are configured when you add a Signing step to a Blue Cedar workflow.
• Approvals are a separate workflow step that you can add to a workflow using the Workflow Builder as described in Using the workflow builder.