As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly route documents for approval.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, power-user skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the document repository and the automation or workflow platform that will receive documents and send approval requests.
   2. Gather the document types, available metadata fields, approval roles, value thresholds, sequence rules, fallback roles and documents that must not be routed automatically.
   3. Paste those details into the prompt, using roles or groups instead of names and excluding document contents unless they are needed for the design.
   4. Ask the model to produce the routing table, exception paths, access checklist and test plan, then resolve every item it marks as missing or ambiguous with the process owner.
   5. Build the workflow in the automation platform using the approved routing table, with least-privilege access, audit logging and a manual hold for excluded or incomplete documents.
   6. Run each test case with harmless sample documents, compare the destination, approver, notification and audit record with the expected result, and obtain a colleague's approval before activating the workflow.

   Prompt

   Act as a workflow architect for a UK organisation. Design a document approval-routing workflow from the information below, but do not claim to have connected to any system or sent any document.
   
   Organisation context: [brief description]
   Document source and destination systems: [for example, shared drive, document management system or email]
   Document types: [list]
   Fields available on each document: [list]
   Routing rules: [state which approver or approval group applies to each document type, department, value band or other condition]
   Approval sequence: [one approver, several in sequence, or several in parallel]
   Required response time: [state the internal target, if any]
   People or groups who may approve: [list roles or groups, not personal data]
   Fallback approver: [role or group]
   Documents that must never be routed automatically: [list]
   Sensitive information and access restrictions: [describe]
   
   Produce:
   1. A plain-English routing table covering every rule.
   2. The exact trigger, conditions, actions and rejection paths for the workflow.
   3. A list of missing inputs and ambiguous rules. Do not invent them.
   4. An exception process for missing fields, unavailable approvers, duplicate documents, rejected documents and failed notifications.
   5. A least-privilege access and audit-log checklist.
   6. A test plan with sample cases for every route, including a case that should not be routed automatically.
   7. A deployment checklist that requires a human to approve permissions and test results before activation.
   Keep the design platform-neutral unless a platform is named. Mark every assumption clearly.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.