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Inbox and change review
The inbox is where work waits for you. Scenarios pending approval. Budget requests needing a decision. Effort weeks needing sign-off. Anything the system needs a human to act on lands here, with a context-sensitive action attached.
If your job is "approve things in Flowstate", this is the only screen you need to keep open.
What ends up in the inbox
| Source | Why it shows up |
|---|---|
| Scenario submitted | You were named as an assignee on a scenario that moved to PENDING_APPROVAL. |
| Scenario rejected | A scenario you submitted was sent back. |
| Budget request | A team is asking for more money than their current allocation. |
| Effort week needs approval | You are the manager on a team whose week was submitted. |
| System signal | An alert from AI Governance or a variance threshold trigger. |
Notifications carry the originating user's avatar, a short title, a relative timestamp, and a primary action button — usually "Review" or "Approve" — that deep-links to the right screen.
Filter and sort
The toolbar lets you filter by source (scenarios only, budgets only, etc.) and sort newest or oldest first. Read items collapse to the bottom by default; Mark all as read when you have triaged.
Bulk actions
Select multiple notifications via checkbox to mark read, delete, or clear in bulk. Clear all notifications wipes the queue without acting on the underlying items — useful for clearing noise but not a substitute for actually approving.
The change-review surface
Clicking through a scenario notification lands you on the scenario's overview page in review mode. (The old /changes page redirects here.) Review mode shows the same screens as a normal scenario session, with three things added:
- Approve and Reject buttons in the header.
- Reject reason prompt when you click reject — required, freeform.
- A comment thread on the scenario, scoped to this review cycle.
You can leave a comment without taking an action, and you can take an action without commenting. Most reviewers do both — "approved, but please move the new hires to Q2 not Q1" is a common pattern.
What approval actually does
Approval moves the scenario from PENDING_APPROVAL to ACTIVE. The scenario owner gets an inbox notification. The scenario does not merge automatically — the owner still hits the merge button to apply changes to live data. That separation is intentional: approval is "yes, I'm OK with this", merge is "OK, do it now".
Rejection moves the scenario to REJECTED with the reason attached. The owner can revise and re-submit, which puts it back into PENDING_APPROVAL — possibly with a different set of assignees if the situation changed.
WARNING
You cannot approve your own scenario. If you submitted it, you need a different person on the assignee list to approve. This is enforced server-side, not just hidden in the UI.
Empty state
When the inbox is empty, you get a quick-link card grid pointing at the most common destinations — effort tracking, the team plan, the roadmap, analytics. Read this as: nothing needs you right now, here is what you might want to look at instead.
Where to go next
- Scenarios workflow — the lifecycle of a scenario from create to merge.
- Comparing scenarios — diff before approving.
- AI Governance alerts — the other big source of notifications.