Stork Delivery
Build the approval queue before the automation
Automation works better when uncertain cases arrive somewhere a person can understand, decide, and finish them.
The problem: automation sends its hardest work to an unmanaged inbox
An automation can handle the straightforward requests and still leave a team with more work. That happens when every exception turns into an email with too little context and no clear owner.
Design the review queue as part of the workflow from the beginning. It is where the business handles uncertainty and keeps work moving.
A practical approach
Show the decision, not just the error
Imagine a purchasing workflow that extracts information from a supplier quote. The requested item matches two catalog records. Sending “validation failed” to an inbox forces someone to reconstruct the entire problem.
A useful review item shows the original quote, the proposed matches, the relevant differences, and the decision needed. It should be clear whether the person is selecting an item, correcting a value, or rejecting the request.
Keep the source available. People should not have to trust an extracted number they cannot check.
Give the queue a working structure
Every item needs a status, an owner or routing rule, and a record of the decision. Make it possible to distinguish new work from work waiting on a customer, supplier, or internal answer.
Age matters as well as count. A queue with ten items can be healthy if they arrived recently, or a serious problem if several have been stuck for a week.
Let reviewers see what another person has already done. Concurrent edits and repeated approvals should not produce conflicting outcomes.
Make approval a controlled action
An approval should apply to a specific proposed change. If the underlying record changes while someone is reviewing it, require the reviewer to see the updated version before committing a consequential action.
Record who approved it and what was approved. If the action fails afterward, show that failure separately from the approval decision. “Approved” and “completed” are different states.
Learn from the exceptions
Group recurring cases by reason. If most reviews are caused by the same missing supplier code, fixing that mapping may be more valuable than improving the extraction model.
Keep a path for cases that do not fit the existing categories. Otherwise, reviewers may choose an inaccurate reason simply to clear the screen.
An effective queue reduces the effort required to handle each exception and makes unresolved work visible. That is a practical foundation for workflow automation, whether the first step uses AI, conventional rules, or a combination of both.
The result: exceptions that a reviewer can finish
Pilot the queue with one recurring exception type. A reviewer should be able to inspect the source, make the permitted decision, and see whether the resulting action completed. Track time spent reviewing and the age of unresolved items against the current process. Start by rebuilding one real exception from receipt through resolution, including a failed action after approval.