Control where a rejected policy goes back to

You control this by editing the change category in advance. The approver chooses the category at reject time, but the administrator chooses the send-back rule that category carries.

Before you start

• You need access to ⚙️ Admin > ↩️ Change Categories.
• Editing change categories requires Edit change_categories permission.
• That permission is satisfiable by an organisation-wide grant only (hierarchy_node_id NULL).

Steps

1. Open ⚙️ Admin > ↩️ Change Categories.
2. Open the change category you want to adjust.
3. Set its send-back rule to author_only if you want rejected policies to go back to the author.
4. Save the change category.

What this does

The send-back rule is what constrains where a rejection can go. The records say the category is chosen by the approver at reject time, while the rule is chosen by an organisation admin in advance on the ChangeCategory admin screen.

The available send-back rules are:

• approver_choice — either target is allowed
• author_only — send_back_to_draft required
• previous_gate_only — send_back_to_template_step_id required, except at gate 1

approver_choice is the default, so adding categories does not silently narrow an existing workflow.

Common problems

• If you want the rejection to go to the author, do not use previous_gate_only. That rule sends back to the previous gate, not to the author.
• At gate 1, there is no earlier gate to fall back to. The records say previous_gate_only behaves as author_only there, rather than leaving the approver unable to act.

Where this lives

• ⚙️ Admin → ↩️ Change Categories — /admin/change-categories

Permissions you need

Some steps here need only a signed-in account: the results are filtered to what your own grants cover rather than refused outright.

Screenshots

Each change category carries the rule that constrains where a rejection may send the document

Reference

Settings and values referred to above:

• approver_choice (send-back rule) — either target is allowed
• author_only (send-back rule) — send_back_to_draft required
• previous_gate_only (send-back rule) — send_back_to_template_step_id required, except at gate 1 -- see reject_step, there is no earlier gate to fall back to

API calls behind this task

- `POST /api/approvals/instances/{step_instance_id}/reject`

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