Philosophy

AI Drafts. Humans Decide.

Fully automated workflows sound appealing until an AI makes an error that goes unreviewed — a wrong material quantity in a $2M proposal, an RFI response that commits to a schedule you can't meet, a takeoff that missed a floor. In construction and manufacturing, the stakes are too high for unsupervised output.

RenderDraw's human gates are not a bolt-on afterthought. They are a first-class block type designed to make human review fast, frictionless, and auditable — not a roadblock, but a quality gate that catches errors before they become costly.

A gate-equipped workflow is not slower than a manual process — it's dramatically faster, because the human is reviewing AI-drafted output that is already 80–90% correct, rather than producing it from scratch.

What Gates Provide

  • Pause: Workflow execution suspends durably — no resources consumed while waiting
  • Notify: Reviewer is notified via email, Slack, or Teams with a summary and review link
  • Review: Reviewer sees full workflow context, AI-drafted content, and source data
  • Decide: Approve, reject, or edit — with optional structured feedback fields
  • Resume: Workflow continues (or branches on rejection) with the reviewer's decision recorded
  • Audit: Full audit trail — who reviewed, what they saw, what they decided, when
Gate Types

Four Gate Block Types

👤

Approve / Reject Gate

The simplest gate type. The workflow pauses and notifies the configured reviewer. The reviewer sees a summary card showing the key workflow data — AI-extracted fields, proposed content, pricing summary — and clicks Approve or Reject.

On approval, the workflow continues to the next block. On rejection, execution routes to a configured fallback path (loop back for correction, escalate, or terminate with notification).

Configuration

  • Reviewer routing: Named user, role (any estimator), or field-based routing (route to the account manager on the Salesforce opportunity)
  • Notification channels: Email, Slack, Teams, in-platform notification
  • Summary template: Configure which workflow fields appear in the reviewer's summary card
  • SLA timer: Escalate to a secondary reviewer if no decision is made within N hours
  • Rejection reason: Optional or required free-text rejection reason stored in audit log

Reviewer Notification Example

📧 From: RenderDraw Workflows

Review Required: RFP Response — Cooling Tower Project

Customer:BuildCo Inc. Project Value:$1,240,000 Due Date:Sept 18, 2025 AI Confidence:94%

📋

Structured Review Form

Rather than a simple approve/reject, the structured review form presents the reviewer with a configurable set of editable fields — pre-populated with AI-generated values. The reviewer can accept the AI's output, correct individual fields, or override entirely.

This is the right gate type when the AI does most of the work but human judgment is needed to verify specific values — quantities in a takeoff, unit prices in a quote, schedule dates in an RFI response.

Field Types Available

  • Short text / long text (with character limit)
  • Number input (with min/max validation)
  • Dropdown (static list or populated from a datasource query)
  • Date picker
  • Currency input (with unit conversion)
  • Checkbox / boolean toggle
  • Read-only display field (for context, not editable)

All field values — both the AI-generated initial values and the reviewer's final values — are stored in the audit log so you can track how often and how much reviewers change AI output over time.

Correction feedback loop. Reviewer corrections to AI-generated values can be optionally fed back into knowledgebase update workflows — building a closed loop where AI accuracy improves over time from reviewer behavior on the gate.

Mobile-friendly review. The review form is fully responsive. Reviewers can approve or correct from their phone via the email notification link — no need to open a laptop for routine approvals.


👥

Multi-Approver Gate

For high-value or high-risk decisions that require more than one human approval. Configure a list of required approvers and a quorum rule — unanimous approval required, or any N of M approvers must approve within the SLA window.

Quorum Options

  • Unanimous: All designated approvers must approve — single rejection fails the gate
  • Majority: More than half must approve — good for committee-style decisions
  • Any N of M: Configure exact threshold — e.g., 2 of 3 VPs must approve
  • First responder: First approver to respond decides — useful for routing to a pool of equivalent approvers

Parallel vs. Sequential

Notify all approvers simultaneously (parallel) for fastest response, or route approvals sequentially (approver 1 must approve before approver 2 is notified) for tiered governance workflows.

Example: $500K+ Contract Approval

Lead Estimator

Approved — Sept 12 at 9:14 AM

VP of Operations

Approved — Sept 12 at 10:31 AM

CFO

Awaiting response — SLA: 4h remaining

Quorum: 2 of 3 required. Gate passed after 2nd approval.


🚨

Conditional Gate

The conditional gate only activates the human review step if a configured condition evaluates to true at runtime. When the condition is false, the gate passes automatically and the workflow continues uninterrupted.

This lets you build "smart gates" that apply human oversight proportional to the risk of a given workflow run — routine small-value bids flow through automatically while high-value or complex bids always get reviewed.

Common Conditions

  • Quote value exceeds configured threshold (e.g., > $100,000)
  • Customer is not in "trusted" account list
  • AI confidence score is below acceptable threshold (e.g., < 85%)
  • Project type is "new customer" or "complex assembly"
  • Any required field was left blank by AI extraction
  • Delivery date is within 5 business days of today (rush bid)

Audit transparency. Even when a conditional gate passes automatically (condition was false, no review required), the gate block records the evaluation result and the auto-pass decision in the audit log. You always have a record of why a workflow run bypassed human review.

SLA Management

SLA Timers and Escalation Paths

How SLA Timers Work

Every human gate can be configured with a response SLA — a maximum duration the workflow will wait before taking escalation action. SLA timers start when the gate notification is sent to the reviewer.

SLA timers support business hours mode — a 4-hour SLA in business hours mode will only count time during configured working hours (e.g., 8 AM – 6 PM, Mon–Fri in the reviewer's timezone), so a Friday afternoon assignment doesn't expire over the weekend.

Escalation Actions

  • Re-notify: Send a reminder notification to the original reviewer
  • Escalate to secondary: Forward the review to a named backup reviewer
  • Escalate to role: Assign to any available user in a backup role (e.g., any senior estimator)
  • Auto-approve: For low-risk gates, pass automatically after SLA expiry (with audit record)
  • Auto-reject: Fail the gate and route to fallback path after SLA expiry
  • Notify and hold: Alert management but keep the gate paused indefinitely

Notification Channels for Gate Alerts

  • Email: Rich HTML notification with data summary, approve/reject buttons that work directly from email (no login required for simple approve/reject)
  • Slack: Message with block kit buttons — approve or reject from within Slack without opening a browser
  • Microsoft Teams: Adaptive card with action buttons — approve, reject, or open full review
  • In-platform: Notification in the RenderDraw platform UI — visible in the notification panel and on the workflow runs page
  • SMS (via Twilio): Optional SMS notification for urgent reviews — link to mobile-optimized review page

One-click from email. Reviewers can approve or reject directly from the email notification without logging into the platform. Security: each link is single-use, time-limited (configurable, default 72 hours), and tied to the reviewer's identity via a signed token.

Compliance

Full Audit Trail for Every Gate Decision

Every gate interaction is logged in the workflow run audit trail — providing a permanent, queryable record of human oversight activity for compliance, quality, and process improvement purposes.

What Is Recorded

  • Gate notification sent timestamp
  • Reviewer identity (name, email, role)
  • Decision (approved / rejected / edited)
  • Decision timestamp
  • Duration from notification to decision
  • Rejection reason (if provided)
  • Field edits (original AI value vs. reviewer value)
  • SLA status at decision time

How to Query Gate Audit Data

The RenderDraw platform provides built-in run analytics views filtered by gate decision, reviewer, date range, and workflow type. Export audit data as CSV or connect to your BI tool via the analytics API.

Gate audit data is retained for the full run retention period (configurable, minimum 7 years for enterprise plans).

Compliance Use Cases

  • ISO 9001 quality management — document that proposals were reviewed before submission
  • Bonding and surety requirements — prove dual-control on large bond submissions
  • SOX compliance — document human approval for revenue-impacting quotes
  • Contract governance — show audit trail for contract value approvals

Build Automation With Confidence

Human gates let you automate without fear. Every AI-generated output that matters gets a human checkpoint before it leaves the system.