How it works
You define a Template once. People start Requests from it. Each Request carries its Bundle from step to step and writes down everything that happens to it. Everything below is a knob on that one idea.
Sec. 1 — The shape of a Step
There is no "simple step" and "advanced step". A three-person board vote and a one-person sign-off are the same structure with different answers.
Named people, positions in the org chart, role holders, whole groups, or a person named in one of the Bundle's own fields. Resolved when the step opens, then written down — so a reorg next month doesn't rewrite who you asked.
Approve, sign, vote, fill in a field, or just acknowledge. Or nothing — a step can be work Orgworks does itself, with no one waiting on it.
Everyone approves, or the first decision settles it, or N people approve, or a majority does. The step closes the moment the answer is decided, and stops asking the people who hadn't gotten to it.
Sec. 2 — Assignment
Templates outlive the people in them. Point a step at a position and it keeps working after the promotion.
A specific person
Exactly who you'd expect. Best for steps that really are about one individual.
Up the org chart
The requester's manager, or their manager's manager, or three levels up. Orgworks walks the reporting line at the moment the step opens. If the chain is too short to satisfy the rule, the request stops rather than quietly skipping someone.
A role
Whoever holds it-approver or secretary today. Change the holder in one place; every template that names the role follows.
A group
Everyone in the board, or the safety committee. Membership is resolved when the step opens.
From a field on the Bundle
The request itself says who. Route to the owner of this cost center — the field carries a person, and the step finds them.
Sec. 3 — Deciding
Sec. 4 — Routing
Most templates never configure routing at all — steps run in the order you listed them. The rest is available the day you need it, on the same template.
amount > 10,000 routes to the CFO; everything else goes
straight to the PO. Conditions are checked in the order you wrote them, and
the last one is the catch-all, so there's always a defined answer. A typo in a
field name can't accidentally match — an unknown field simply never does.
Send one request down several branches at once — legal and security review in parallel, not in a queue. The step that rejoins them waits until every branch that could still reach it has either finished or been ruled out. It doesn't wait forever on a branch the request never took.
A rejection can route to an earlier step for a fix. That step reopens as a fresh round with freshly resolved people, and only the new round counts — the rejection that sent it back can't also sink the retry.
Archive the bundle. Email it to whoever holds a role. Post it to another system. Write up the vote results. Start a child request and wait for it to come back. The request advances exactly as if a person had approved.
Sec. 5 — The record
Not reconstructed later from whatever's left. Each line is appended at the moment of the thing it describes, and nothing goes back to edit it.
Mar 3 09:12
D. Okafor started this request from Purchase approval v4
Mar 3 09:12
D. Okafor added quote-adjustable-desk.pdf v1 to the bundle
Mar 3 09:12
Waiting on M. Reyes — the requester's manager
Mar 3 14:40
M. Reyes approved — "fine by me, comes out of Q2"
Mar 4 08:03
S. Patel approved — saw quote-adjustable-desk.pdf v1
Mar 4 08:03
Waiting on J. Lindqvist — holds the role it-approver
Mar 7 08:03
Orgworks reminded J. Lindqvist — no action in 3 days
Bring a workflow you run on email today — an approval chain, a renewal, a board packet. We'll build it as a Template on the call and walk a real Request through it.
30 minutes. No slides.