How Families Review and Approve a Drawing
Send a drawing to the family for approval, how they approve it from the customer portal, the window to undo, and what you receive back.
Written By Dennis Rodin
Last updated About 3 hours ago
Families approve their monument drawings right from the customer portal, or ask you for changes, and MonuDesk keeps a record of exactly what was approved and when. This applies only to drawings you have shared as External.
Drawings show in the portal while the Design Proofs switch in Settings → Customer Portal is on, which is how every account starts. A design or proof stage asks the family to act only while a drawing is waiting for their approval.
Getting the drawing to the family
A drawing only reaches the portal once it is External, and MonuDesk offers to do that for you at the moment you upload it.
Open the order and go to Notes & Files. On the Files card, drop the drawing on the Drag a document here or browse files area.
Answer What type of document is this? and choose Drawing.
The file lands as Internal, and a prompt appears at the bottom left asking "Do you want [email address] to be notified about this?". Click Notify customer: that switches the drawing to External so it appears in the portal gallery, and emails the family their portal link. The button shows Sent, then the prompt closes.
Note: the prompt closes itself after eight seconds and answers no, which leaves the drawing Internal and sends nothing. Flip it to External at any time afterwards with the Internal/External control on the file's row. Full detail: How to View and Download Documents
A sketch uploaded on the order. When you upload or replace the Front or Back sketch image on the order's Order Details tab, MonuDesk files it under Notes & Files as a Drawing and asks Show this drawing to the family? Click Show to the family and it switches to External, so it appears in the customer portal under drawings, where the family can approve it or ask for changes. No email goes out from this prompt. Keep internal leaves it in Notes & Files only.
What the family does
On the portal, all external drawings appear in a gallery. The family selects the drawings they want to approve and clicks Approve this drawing (or Approve these N drawings). A short 2 minute countdown starts, during which they can click Undo my approval to back out. If the countdown finishes without an undo, the approval locks in and the portal turns view-only for that order. The family does not need to keep the page open for this: even if they close their browser right after approving, the approval still locks in and reaches your team.
A drawing saved as a PDF shows as pictures of its pages, one under the other, each captioned Page 1 of 3, Page 2 of 3 and so on. The family can click or tap a page to zoom in. Just after you upload a PDF, the portal may show Preparing your drawing ("This only takes a moment. Your drawing will appear here on its own.") until the pages are ready. The portal shows the first 30 pages. For a longer PDF it says "This PDF has [number] pages. Only the first 30 can be shown here. Please download it to see every page before you approve." and offers Download the drawing. Any other drawing file that the portal cannot show as a picture offers Download the drawing as well. The family approves a PDF drawing the same way as any other drawing.
When the family asks for changes
A drawing waiting for approval also has Request changes in the portal. It opens Request Changes, where the family answers What would you like us to change? and clicks Send. They then see Your change request was sent.
On your side:
The order popup shows a banner at the top, "The [family name] family requested changes to Drawing [number] on [date]", with the family's note and a View drawing button that opens Notes & Files. The drawing number is the one the family saw in the portal.
Notes & Files: the drawing carries a Changes requested chip, with "Requested by the family ([name])" under it.
Activity Timeline: "Changes requested by the family ([name])".
The bell: every active team member and the order's assignee get "The [family name] family requested changes to Drawing [number]" with the note. It shows under All.
The Design to-do moves to its Changes Requested step.
Upload the new drawing and share it with the family as External, or flip an uploaded drawing to External. The banner goes away, the Design to-do moves back to Family Approval Pending, and the family can approve the new drawing or ask for more changes.
After approval
Approved drawings show Approved on [date] on the portal. Any drawing that was not part of that batch still shows Awaiting approval but can no longer be approved from the portal. If the family later needs to approve more drawings, your team handles those from the order side.
What you receive
When the approval locks, you get an email listing each approved drawing, who approved it, and when, with a button that opens the order in MonuDesk. If the order has a Design to-do, it moves to Complete on its own.
On your Orders board the order's card also gets a green check next to the name at the top. Hover it (tap it on an iPad or phone) to read who approved the drawing and when. Upload a newer drawing and the check goes away until that one is approved.
Approving in person
If the family is in your office and approves the design face to face, your team can approve on their behalf instead of sending them through the portal. See How to View and Download Documents for the manual path.
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