AI Reply Approval
Hold every AI email reply as a draft until an agent approves it, and build a view of the conversations waiting on a person.
Turn on reply approval for an email inbox when your team wants to read every AI reply before the customer gets it, for example while you are starting out with the AI agent. The AI still drafts a reply for each customer email, but nothing is sent until an agent approves it.
Turning it on
Reply approval is a setting on each email inbox, so you can require it for one address and let another reply on its own.
- Dashboard: Settings -> Channels -> Email, open the inbox and switch on Approve AI replies before sending.
- Copilot, MCP or REST: set
aiReplyApprovalRequired: truewithupdate_email_inboxorPATCH /rest/v1/email-inboxes/{inboxId}. See Email Inbox Settings.
Contact form conversations follow the inbox they reply from, which is the business's primary inbox when the form did not arrive by email.
Approval covers the reply, not the actions
The AI calls its actions while it drafts the reply, before anyone approves it. If the bot can refund, cancel or change orders, those changes happen even when you later reject the reply. Before turning on approval, make sure every action the bot can take is safe to run unreviewed: lookups, or a request your team processes by hand (for example a row added to a sheet) instead of the change itself.
Reviewing a draft
A draft shows in the conversation with a dashed border, marked Draft · Not sent yet. The customer sees nothing until it is approved.
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Approve & send | The reply is sent as written. If the AI meant to hand the conversation to your team after this reply, the handoff happens now. |
| Reject | You can say what's wrong with the reply. It is never sent, it stays in the thread marked Rejected · Not sent, and your team takes over. |
Drafts can't be edited. Approve the reply as the AI wrote it, or reject it and reply yourself, so the thread always shows what the AI actually produced.
Approving or rejecting is recorded in the conversation's activity with the agent's name, and a rejection reason appears there too. A draft that someone else already handled cannot be approved or rejected again.
Why reasons matter
Rejecting a draft and taking over a conversation from the header both ask why. The reason is optional, but every one given there is stored, so your team can see what the AI gets wrong and fix it with workflows, rules or knowledge. The more specific the reason, the more useful it is: "it promised an address change, but we can't change addresses after an order is placed" beats "wrong".
When the conversation changes first
- The customer writes again: the AI drafts a new reply that covers the new message, and the old draft is removed. If the old draft's turn changed something (such as an order) or was going to hand off, it is kept next to the new one instead, so you can see what happened. Lookups alone don't count as a change.
- An agent takes over, hands off or closes the conversation: waiting drafts are cancelled and never sent.
- Auto-close: a conversation with a waiting draft is not closed for inactivity. The inactivity timer starts again when you approve the reply.
A queue for drafts and decisions
Conversations that wait on a person match the Awaiting Human Input filter. Today that means:
- an AI reply draft waiting for approval, and
- a pending decision card that someone has to answer.
Save it as a view, for example Needs approval: Awaiting Human Input = Yes, Status = Open. A conversation leaves the view as soon as the draft is approved or rejected and every card is answered. In the conversation list, these conversations show a small clipboard mark instead of the AI agent mark.
Limits
- Drafts don't expire, unlike decision cards. A conversation with a waiting draft stays open and in your queue until someone approves or rejects it, so make sure someone works the view.
- Approval applies to AI replies on email, including replies to contact forms. Live chat and social channels reply immediately.
- Test and playground conversations are not held for approval.
- The response delay set on the inbox still applies before the AI drafts. Once approved, the reply is sent right away.