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Approving or rejecting certificate requests

If you are a PKI Administrator or System Administrator, you can create, edit, and delete approval workflows. Additionally, you can approve or reject requests regardless of whether you were added as an approver to a workflow.

If you are an approver, you can approve or reject requests that you have been assigned to.

As an approver, you'll get an email asking for your approval. Click Approve to okay the request or Reject to decline it. If you reject, you'll need to say why. Both actions require that you first sign in.

Tip

If a request has already triggered an approval rule and is in the In Approval status, subsequent changes to that rule by an System Administrator or PKI Administrator won't affect the request. The request will continue to be processed based on the conditions that were in place when it first entered the In Approval status.

To approve or reject a certificate request

  1. Sign in to Venafi Control Plane.
  2. Click Inventory > Certificate Requests.
  3. Locate the certificate request using the search box and filters.
  4. Click on the Common Name of the request you want to review.
  5. Click Approve or Reject.

Depending on what actions other approvers have selected, or if they haven't taken any action yet, the certificate moves to the next state in the workflow.

To take action on multiple certificate requests

  1. Click Inventory > Certificate Requests.
  2. Click the All Requests filter link.
  3. Click Requests Pending My Approval.
  4. Check the box next to the certificate requests you want to include.
  5. Click Approve or Reject.

Workflow approval banner

In addition to email notifications, you will see a workflow item waiting for your approval in TLS Protect Cloud via a banner notification saying Certificate Requests pending your approval. This banner is displayed on the Dashboard, Certificates, Certificate Requests, and Applications pages.

  1. Click View Pending Requests to see the specific requests you need to take action on. This link takes you to the Certificate Requests page and automatically sets the filter to Requests Pending My Approval.

  2. Follow the steps in the previous section to approve or reject the certificate requests.

Act promptly on approvals

Be aware that approvals have a set expiration period, determined by the Approval Rule. If the request is not approved within this time frame, it will be rejected automatically. Act quickly to avoid automatic rejections.

Next steps

Curious about the approval and rejection process and how the workflow's notifications work? Learn more about issuance workflows or revocation workflows.