Approve and manage sequences

Open a sequence in My library or Marketplace and select Add contacts. Choose the contacts, then check the enrollment settings before confirming. You are the sending user.

Athean checks the contacts against the sequence's steps. If any have warnings, Review contact deliverability opens. Warnings are advisory: you can include a contact despite its warnings. The one exception is Active sequence on an operator.

When a sequence has no other channels, those steps stay, and enrollment can fail for that contact with a specific reason.

1. Use the warning filters to see the contacts with each warning.
2. To include contacts, select their rows and choose Ignore warnings, or select Include all N after reviewing every contact that needs review. Contacts whose warnings you don't ignore aren't added.
3. Check No LinkedIn, Email issues, and No phone in the banner for how many contacts will skip steps on each channel.
4. Check the contact count on the confirm button, then confirm.

If the sequence has automatic email or LinkedIn steps and the sending user hasn't connected a Google or Microsoft mailbox, or LinkedIn, the dialog shows an alert and you can't confirm. The sending user connects the account in Settings → Integrations; Go to Settings opens that page in your own settings. If a step uses the Sender Scheduling Link variable and the sending user has no active scheduling link, enrollment stops with a message. Add or activate the link in Settings → Scheduling link, then try again.

Athean limits how many contacts you can add at once:

• Templates: Each batch has a limit, and the add-contacts screen shows it when you reach it.
• Operators: The limit depends on how many of the sending user's drafts are generating or waiting in Approvals. Contacts over the limit appear under Some contacts were not added. When you add contacts to an operator from elsewhere in Athean, such as a list or an account, Operator queue is almost full appears instead; Add N anyway adds the contacts that fit.
• AI credits: Operator drafts use AI credits (see AI usage and credit limits). If this month's credits don't cover every contact, only the covered contacts are queued.

After you confirm, read the result. Some contacts can be added while others fail or are deferred. Deferred operator contacts appear under Some contacts were not added and aren't queued for later. After you approve or reject pending drafts, or once more AI credits are available, select Retry deferred.

Each contact you add to an operator appears in Prospecting → Sequences → Approvals. The status is Generating while the operator researches the contact and writes the draft, which can take several minutes. It changes to Pending, under Awaiting approval, when the draft is ready for review.

1. Select a draft to open it, or select Start with N approvals to review pending drafts one after another.
2. Check the subjects, messages, Cc recipients, call notes, task instructions, timing, and sending user. Use Sources, when shown, to see the context behind the content.
3. Change the draft if needed:
   • Edit the text directly. Save & exit saves your edits without approving.
   • Refine with feedback rewrites the existing steps from your feedback. Edit with Athean opens the draft beside a chat with Athean so you can edit it together. Both work only on drafts awaiting approval.
   • Regenerate writes a new draft from the operator's current configuration and replaces the current one. In the draft editor, unsaved edits are discarded after you confirm; in Start with N approvals, they're saved first.
4. Select Approve to start the sequence, or Reject to discard the draft without sending anything. In the editor, approving or rejecting saves your edits first.

If the operator declined to write a draft, the row shows the reason, and the draft can't be approved as-is. Adjust the operator if needed, then regenerate the draft.

To act on several drafts, select their rows and use Approve (N), Reject (N), Regen (N), or Reassign (N). If an administrator turned on Disable bulk template approval in Org settings → Permissions, approve drafts one at a time on this page; the setting doesn't limit approvals through Chat. Reject, Regen, and Reassign still work on multiple rows.

You can also ask Chat to add contacts to a sequence, review operator drafts, or approve or reject specific drafts you have access to (see Chat and Ask Athean). Adding contacts through Chat runs right away, without an approval card. For a template, this enrolls the contacts and starts outreach. For an operator, each contact's draft goes to Approvals, unless you ask Athean to approve the drafts automatically, which starts outreach. Approving specific drafts through Chat shows an approval card first, and approving the card starts real outreach. The same enrollment requirements apply, so check the result Chat reports for each contact.

Chat, agents, and AI assistants connected through MCP can also save a personalized outreach draft for one existing contact to Approvals, without an operator and without an approval card. The draft appears as Pending, and its Sequence name identifies the contact, plus the agent when an agent saved it. Saving it doesn't enroll the contact, create tasks, or send anything. The draft belongs to the person it was saved for (you, when you ask in Chat or through MCP, or the person an agent run is for), who becomes the sender when it's approved. Approve or reject it like any other draft; approving starts real outreach.

Approve uses the enrollment settings saved with each draft when the contact was added. To review or change them first, select Approve with settings. These settings change scheduling only, not the draft's content:

• Priority sequence: Schedules automated steps ahead of other sequence work when sending capacity allows. It doesn't bypass daily limits or step waits, and it doesn't reorder manual tasks.
• Completion deadline: If the sequence hasn't finished by this date and time, it's marked Expired: its pending step is canceled and no further steps are created. An action already being processed at the deadline can still finish. The picker uses your local time zone, not the contact's.
• Cc recipients: Adds these addresses to every email step, on top of any Cc saved on individual steps. They can't be changed once the sequence is live.

Select Approve sequence (or Approve N sequences) to confirm. When the selected drafts have different saved settings, plain Approve keeps each draft's own settings, and confirming this dialog applies the displayed settings to all of them.

If a draft's saved completion deadline has passed, approval fails. Open Approve with settings and choose a new deadline or remove it.

Approval creates the contact's sequence and schedules its first step; an automatic first step doesn't necessarily send the moment you approve. Follow the work in Active sequences and Prospecting → Tasks.

Open Prospecting → Sequences → Active sequences and filter by Sequence status: Active, Paused, Expired, Completed, or Error.

• Sequence status is the state of the whole enrollment. Step status shows whether the current step is Upcoming or Overdue. An active sequence can have an overdue step.
• Step action date is an estimate. Sending limits and scheduling rules can move it.
• Sequence status reason explains the latest change, such as a reply, a bounced email, an out-of-office reply, a call disposition, a deleted task, a passed completion deadline, or a failed send. Read it before resuming or retrying.
• Error means the current step has no scheduled action or open task.
• Skip to next step cancels the current pending automated action, or skips the current open task, and advances the sequence. It doesn't perform the skipped outreach, and the next automatic step may run right away.

You can also ask Chat to find and reschedule the scheduled email for an active sequence's current step (see Email: sending and tracking). Chat does this without an approval card. The new time can't be after the sequence's completion deadline, and sending limits can still move the email later. Rescheduling keeps the email's content and recipients and doesn't advance the sequence.

Use the row menu, or select rows and use the bulk action bar, in Active sequences:

• Pause: Stops the sequence, cancels its unfinished scheduled sends (including an email from the sequence that you scheduled for later), and removes its open tasks. Completed steps stay recorded.
• Resume: Continues from the current unfinished step, recreating its task or rescheduling its automated action. Completed steps aren't sent again. If the completion deadline passed while the sequence was paused, it changes to Expired instead. A sequence isn't resumed if its sending user already has the contact in another active sequence. If another user does, Athean asks you to choose Resume anyway or Skip these.
• Resume an Expired sequence: Asks for confirmation, then clears the passed deadline so the unfinished steps can continue.
• Delete: Removes the contact's sequence enrollment and cancels its unfinished steps. The template or operator in My library isn't deleted.

These actions can't recall an email or other action that was already sent. After a bulk change, check the success and failure results and each sequence's latest status.

Use Change due date to reschedule the open task for each selected sequence's current step. You need permission to manage those tasks; access to the sequence alone isn't enough.

1. Open Workspace → Activity → Dashboards, then select the Activity tab and Sequences. Set the period and People, and select Sequences started or a Sequence mix tile.
2. Select the enrollments whose current tasks you want to reschedule.
3. Select Change due date (N). N is the number of open current tasks in your selection that you can reschedule.
4. Choose the new date and time, review the confirmation, and select Change.
5. Check the success and failure results.

This changes existing open tasks for the current step only. Later sequence steps and completion deadlines stay the same. If the button is unavailable, none of the selected sequences has an open current task you can reschedule.

Select Reassign on one or more rows in Active sequences or Approvals to move contacts to a different template or operator. The sending user stays the same. Choose the replacement, review the contact checks, and confirm.

• For an active sequence, Athean pauses the current enrollment and starts the replacement from its first step. A template creates a live enrollment; an operator generates a new draft in Approvals that needs approval.
• If an active sequence's replacement fails, Athean tries to restore the original sequence. The result says whether the original was restored. If it wasn't, check the original sequence before trying again. In Approvals, the original draft is rejected first and stays rejected if the replacement fails.

To enroll contacts or manage sequences for another sender, an administrator grants you access on the Act on behalf tab in Org settings → Permissions (see Permissions and roles). The two grants are independent:

• Start sequences on behalf of: Enroll contacts as that sender, create one-off emails as that sender, and approve or reject that sender's operator drafts.
• Manage sequences on behalf of: Pause, resume, and delete that sender's sequences, skip or queue automated steps, change completion deadlines, and edit, reschedule, send now, or cancel their scheduled one-off emails. You can also ask Chat to reschedule their scheduled sequence emails (see Email: sending and tracking).

Neither grant lets you complete or skip another person's manual tasks; that needs the task's assignee or an org admin. Org admins can act for everyone without a grant. A role with Start sequences for any user or Manage sequences for any user works like the matching grant for every sender.

If a control is unavailable, its tooltip explains why. For an unexpected failure, contact support with the contact, sequence, sending user, and the status shown.