Moderation Queues
Moderation queues can be used for people in the loop where they receive items that need some type of human action to be performed before the automation continues its processing.
A common usage is where someone needs to manually review and approve something before an automation continues its processing.
For example, maybe a CFO needs to approve certain invoices. By using a moderation queue, the CFO can receive invoices needing approval. The invoices are placed into a queue. Each invoice can be reviewed and either approved or denied by the CFO. As each invoice is moderated by the CFO, the automation then continues its processing for that invoice.
Moderation queues support the concept of "scope". This is useful where a single automation can direct items to separate queues for moderation by different people. For example, maybe invoices over a certain dollar amount need to go to the CFO, while those under that limit can go to a different person or even a group of people. By configuring one queue with a scope of "CFO", only those invoices over a certain dollar amount can be placed into a moderation queue that only the CFO would access, while all other invoices would go into a different queue to be moderated by someone else or even a group of people.
A simple moderation queue automation looks like this:
Moderation queue actions are found under the System Utility category:
In the Human Interaction app:
The first action in the above sample, "configured moderation queue UI" is optional. It allows some elements of the moderation queue's UI (user interface) to be customized:
The next action, "get moderation request link", generates a unique URL to an item being placed into the moderation queue:
The title field describes the item to be moderated, while the description should fully describe what the reviewer needs to know in order to make a decision.
The output from the "get moderation request link" is a URL link to the specific item added to the moderation queue. This link is typically sent to someone, e.g. via email:
The "await human moderation" action is then used to pause the automation until someone either approves or denies the item:
Alternatively, the "await human moderation with timeout" action can be used. This variation will emit a configured default moderation result (e.g. either "approved" or "denied") after a configured amount of time:
Finally, a condition is used to take action based upon the moderation result:
While an item is awaiting moderation, it is possible to access the item in the moderation queue from the automation's history:
The moderation queue itself is a separate web page that contains a list of items awaiting moderation:
The link to a moderation item opens the item directly. Or they can be clicked and opened from the above list:
As items are approved or denied the automation will wake up to perform its processing and the item is removed from the queue list. The moderator can continue approving/denying items in the queue list until it is empty.
