Roomcord / Approval ballots
Approve the decision before another meeting
A decision should arrive ready to answer. Roomcord’s approval ballots connect the question, evidence, recommendation and approvers to one deadline, then carry the outcome into the room’s board.
What is an approval ballot?
An approval ballot is a structured decision request with a recommendation, named approvers and a response deadline. It gives project owners and team leads a way to settle a question asynchronously, with APPROVE, CHANGE or REASSIGN recorded against the same source-linked card.
In Roomcord’s developing decision engine, a conversation becomes a suggested card, people confirm its details, and a ballot resolves the decision before the accepted commitment moves into follow-up.
Bring a recommendation, not an open-ended question
Prepare these fields before sending the request:
| Field | What the approver needs |
|---|---|
| Question | The specific decision to make |
| Options | Real alternatives and their tradeoffs |
| Data and sources | Evidence, its date and any unresolved gaps |
| Recommendation | The owner’s preferred option and reason |
| Needed-by date | A deadline with a time zone and consequence of delay |
| Owner and approvers | Who prepares the request and who has authority to decide |
Missing evidence stays visible. A recommendation does not turn an unverified assumption into a fact.
From request to recorded outcome
- Capture the question from a conversation, meeting or file. AI proposes a card with its source; people confirm the owner and details.
- Name the approvers, recommendation and deadline. Check the room’s authority limits and protected categories before sending.
- Respond APPROVE, CHANGE or REASSIGN. Approve records agreement; change requests a revision; reassign routes the decision to the right responsible person. An unresolved revision remains open.
- Keep attributable changes and the decision reason with the card. A changed recommendation returns to the named approvers for review. If every agenda item is resolved in advance, the intended meeting workflow cancels the decision meeting.
- Ask the action owner to accept the resulting commitment and date. An approval is a decision, not automatic acceptance of work by someone else.
Set limits for silence and protected decisions
The Roomcord vision includes a bounded silence-as-consent policy: for agreed, unprotected items only, an unanswered recommendation may proceed at the deadline under the room’s recorded policy. Show the policy and consequence before the ballot is sent. Record a timeout outcome as such, separate from an affirmative APPROVE response.
Money above the room’s limit, legal matters and people decisions require explicit approval. Silence cannot clear those protected items. If authority, category or evidence is unclear, keep the decision unresolved and route it for clarification.
Illustrative ballot: choose a launch-review date
This is a fictional workflow example, not a customer result or a product screenshot.
Question: Move the internal launch review from November 9 to November 12?
Owner: Claire. Approver: Daniel. Reply by: November 6, 2026 at 16:00 Asia/Taipei.
Options: Keep November 9 with incomplete test evidence, or move to November 12 after the planned test.
Source: The room’s November 5 meeting, minute 12:40, plus the dated test plan. The test result is still unavailable.
Recommendation: Move the review to November 12; keep the launch date itself unresolved until test evidence arrives. Explicit approval is requested.
Example outcome: Daniel replies APPROVE with the reason “review after testing.” Claire accepts a separate commitment to bring the test evidence by November 12. The decision and changed review date enter the ledger; the board follows the commitment. This does not establish launch readiness.
Availability as of October 21, 2026
Rooms, chat, files and meeting capture form the existing Roomcord foundation. Approval ballots, automated routing, timeout policies and linked commitment follow-up are in development. Replies through email and LINE are planned participation channels, not generally available integrations claimed on this page. Confirm the supported workflow for your first room with the Bewize team.Connect the decision to the work after it
See how auto-board proposes source-linked cards, follow accepted commitments with commit and chase, and preserve the reason in the decision ledger.
Explore the Roomcord decision engine or bring one recurring approval to the team.