How approval works
By default, every sequence Swan builds requires your approval before the first message goes out. You can tell Swan explicitly to send a sequence automatically, without approval, and it will only skip approval when you’ve said so — otherwise sequences always wait for a human decision before contacting anyone. Approval happens at the sequence level. The first time a contact is queued into a sequence, all of it — every step, across email and LinkedIn — sits in the approval queue together. Approving unlocks the entire sequence for that contact; you don’t approve each step individually, and there’s no separate per-step approval to turn on.Where to approve
You can approve or reject from any of these places, and they stay in sync:- In the app, on the Campaign’s Awaiting approval tab at Outreach → Campaigns — it lists every sequence in that Campaign waiting on a decision. Select one to review its steps; move through the list with the arrow keys or J and K.
- In chat, from the sequence card Swan posts when it builds a sequence — click it to open the same review.
- In Slack, if your workspace has Swan’s Slack app connected — pending approvals post to your notifications channel with Approve and Ignore/Deny buttons. The card names the sending inbox; when a sequence emails from one person’s inbox and messages on LinkedIn from another’s, it lists both.
Editing before you approve
While a sequence is waiting on your approval, you’re not limited to a plain approve or reject — you can edit the subject and body of its messages first. In the app you edit inline; in Slack, clicking approve on a message opens a modal with editable subject and body fields. When you approve with edits, two things happen:- The edited copy is what actually gets sent.
- If this is the contact’s first approved message in the sequence, your edited version is kept as a message example, marked as edited. Examples don’t change how Swan writes on their own; see writing and personalization for how to steer the writing. Editing a follow-up step (not the first message) updates that step but isn’t saved as a new example, since it’s treated as an isolated edit rather than a repeatable pattern.
Rejecting a sequence
You approve or reject the whole proposed sequence for a contact, not individual steps. Rejecting it removes that contact from the queue and nothing further sends to them. This only affects that one contact — it doesn’t touch other contacts running the same sequence. If you reject, Swan doesn’t retry that contact automatically — you’d need to build a new outreach for them if you change your mind later.Approval expiry
A sequence doesn’t wait for approval forever. If nobody approves or rejects it within your org’s approval expiry — counted from when the sequence was queued for approval; 10 days for new orgs and 30 days for orgs created before approval expiry launched, unless your org changes it — Swan rejects it as expired. Expiry is checked every hour, so it can happen up to an hour after the deadline. An expired sequence leaves the queue exactly like a rejected one: nothing is sent, the contact is free for new outreach, and its Slack card changes to show it expired without review. Anyone who can chat with Swan can ask what the expiry is. Only Admins can change it — from 1 to 90 days, or off entirely — by asking Swan in chat. Trigger runs can’t change it. Lowering it applies to sequences already waiting, so older ones expire on the next hourly check. When Swan builds or shows a sequence that’s awaiting approval, it tells you when that sequence will expire.Review history
Swan keeps the approval or rejection decision, who made it, and when. Rejected outreach stays available as history even though it leaves the active queue; you can ask Swan to find rejected sequences or tell you who reviewed one. Expired sequences are recorded as rejected with no named reviewer and a status reason ofSTOPPED_APPROVAL_EXPIRED, so you can tell them apart from a person’s rejection. Automated runs (such as scheduled triggers) may approve or reject outreach that is still awaiting review; those decisions are recorded with no named reviewer, while a person’s decision always names who reviewed it.
Sequences built with your instruction to send automatically are recorded as Sent automatically (AUTO_SENT), separately from a person’s approval. This records the decision to proceed without manual review; it does not mean a message has already been delivered. Sending still follows the schedule and inbox limits.