Require event approvals
Require event-level approval for your calendars to ensure all events are approved before they're added to the Calendar, even if they don't require rooms or resources. If you have multiple calendars in your organization, you can set different approval requirements for each one.
Here are some examples of when requiring event-level approvals can be helpful:
You manage a staff calendar, and you want to approve or reject events that don't require a room or resource, such as off-site events and virtual meetings.
You have multiple team members with Calendar access, and you want to make sure their events are approved before they're published in Church Center.
When you toggle this setting on, newly created events remain "pending" until the assigned approval groups respond. Events that are pending event-level approval cannot be published on Church Center and aren't included in shared calendar feeds, such as iCal feeds and kiosks.
All approval groups must approve the event before it appears as "approved" on the Calendar. If one approval group rejects the event, the event receives a "rejected" status and must be recreated or duplicated before it can be approved again. If an event creator is also part of a calendar's assigned approval groups, the event automatically receives event-level approval from that approval group.
How do approvals work in Calendar?
Events in Calendar can go through two levels of approval:
Event-level approval: Event-level approval determines whether the event can happen at all, regardless of room or resource status. For example, you can approve a youth group meeting for December 19th because you know it should happen that day, regardless of where it happens.
You can choose which calendars in your organization require event-level approval, but all event request form submissions require event-level approval. Until an event receives event-level approval, you cannot publish it in Church Center, and it won't appear in iCal feeds and kiosks.
Room or resource approval: If your event requires rooms or resources, they must be approved before the event can reserve them. This helps prevent double-bookings in your organization. Rooms and resources go through the approval process as soon as you request them for an event.
For example, if a youth group meeting needs to happen in the auditorium, the event owner can add "Auditorium" to the event's requested rooms and resources. The booking request for the auditorium must be approved before the event can happen in that space.
This level of approval applies only to the requested rooms or resources, so a rejected room or resource doesn't necessarily mean that the event can't happen.
These approval processes happen independently, so you don't have to wait on one to act on the other. An approver can grant event-level approval before the room or resource requests are approved, and a room can be approved or rejected before the event itself is approved.
Warning
If an event receives event-level rejection, it can no longer happen at all—even if the rooms and resources were approved. You must recreate the event before it can be approved again.
Require event approvals for a new calendar
You can toggle the event approval requirement setting when creating new calendars in your organization.
Select the Events page from the top navigation in Calendar.
Select the ⚙️ settings icon in the top right.
Select Calendars from the left sidebar.
Select New calendar in the top right.
Enter your calendar's name and description, then choose a color for your new calendar.
Select the Require event approval toggle.
Select the Select approval groups field.
Check the boxes next to the approval groups you'd like to assign to this calendar's events.
Select Create in the bottom right.
Require event approvals for an existing calendar
You can require event-level approvals for existing calendars in your organization.
Important
Previously approved events in this calendar will remain approved. Toggling on the event approval setting does not reset the status of your previously approved events to "pending."
Select the Events page from the top navigation in Calendar.
Select the ⚙️ settings icon in the top right to open the Settings page.
Select the Calendars tab from the left sidebar.
Select Actions to the right of the calendar you'd like to edit.
Choose Edit from the dropdown.
Select the Require event approval toggle.
Select the Select approval groups field.
Check the boxes next to the approval groups you'd like to assign to this calendar's events.
Select Save to apply your changes.
Remove the event approval requirement from an existing calendar
If you no longer want to require event approvals for an existing calendar, toggle the setting off.
Warning
Toggling off the Require event approvals setting automatically approves all pending events in that calendar.
Select the Events page from the top navigation in Calendar.
Select the ⚙️ settings icon in the top right to open the Settings page.
Select the Calendars tab from the left sidebar.
Select Actions to the right of the calendar you'd like to edit.
Choose Edit from the dropdown.
Select the Require event approval toggle to turn the setting off.
Select Save to apply your changes.
When you turn off the event approval requirement for a calendar, approved and rejected events keep their status, but all pending events are automatically approved.
What happens if you move an event to a different calendar?
You can move an event to a different calendar using the Event Calendar dropdown on the event's Settings tab or the bulk edit tool. If you move an event to a calendar with a different event approval requirement, the approval status changes accordingly:
Approvals-required calendar -> No-approvals calendar: Pending events are automatically approved.
No-approvals calendar -> Approvals-required calendar: Approved events revert to a pending status.
Approvals-required calendar -> Approvals-required calendar: Approvals from overlapping approval groups carry over to the new calendar. If the new calendar has different approval groups, the event reverts to a pending status.