Audra Flow

Collaboration & Approvals

Product delivery is a team effort. Audra Flow gives your team the tools to work together with clear structure — comments for discussion, approval gates for governance, traceability for visibility, and an audit trail so nothing gets lost.

This guide covers every collaboration feature in the platform and explains how to use them effectively.

Overview

Most product delivery tools treat collaboration as an afterthought — a chat box in the corner or a notification feed. Audra Flow takes a different approach. Collaboration is built into the structure of how work moves through the system.

Every artifact in Audra Flow — whether it is a goal, a persona, a user journey, or a user story — supports comments, approval workflows, and full traceability. This means that the conversation about a piece of work lives right next to the work itself, and every decision is recorded.

Here is how the collaboration features work together:

  • Comments let team members discuss artifacts in context.
  • Approval workflows create formal checkpoints where designated reviewers sign off on work before it moves forward.
  • The traceability graph shows how every artifact connects to every other artifact, so you can see the full picture from goal to release.
  • The audit trail records every action taken in the system, giving you an immutable history of your project.
  • Templates ensure consistency across projects by providing proven starting points.

Comments & Discussions

Comments in Audra Flow are attached directly to artifacts. Instead of discussing work in a separate chat tool or email thread, you can have the conversation right where the work lives.

Adding a Comment

Open any artifact and scroll to the comments section at the bottom. Type your message and click Post. Your comment appears immediately and is visible to everyone who has access to that artifact.

Comments support basic formatting, so you can use bold text, bullet points, and links to make your feedback clear and easy to read.

Mentioning Team Members

To bring someone into a conversation, type @ followed by their name. A dropdown will appear showing matching team members. Select the person and they will receive a notification alerting them to your comment.

Mentions are useful when you need a specific person's input. For example, you might write: “@Sarah, can you review the acceptance criteria on this story before I submit it for approval?”

Threaded Discussions

When a comment sparks a longer conversation, you can reply directly to it to create a thread. Threads keep related messages grouped together so that the comments section does not turn into a single long list of unrelated messages.

To reply to a comment, click the Reply link beneath it. Your response will appear nested under the original comment, making it easy to follow the back-and-forth.

Who Can Comment

Owners, Admins, Editors, and Viewers can all add comments. Guests can read comments on the projects they are assigned to but cannot post their own. See Roles & Permissions for the full breakdown.

Approval Workflows

Approval workflows are how your team ensures that work meets quality standards before it moves to the next phase. They are formal checkpoints built into the delivery process.

How Approval Gates Work

An approval gate is a status on an artifact that tracks whether it has been reviewed and signed off. Every artifact in Audra Flow goes through these stages:

  1. Draft — The artifact is being worked on. It is not yet ready for review.
  2. Ready for Review — The author marks the artifact as complete and submits it for review. This signals to the team that it needs attention.
  3. In Review — A reviewer (an Admin or Owner) picks up the artifact and evaluates it.
  4. Approved — The reviewer confirms the artifact meets the required standard. It is now locked from further edits unless the approval is revoked.
  5. Changes Requested — The reviewer sends the artifact back with feedback. The author addresses the feedback and resubmits.

Who Can Approve

Only Owners and Admins can approve or reject artifacts. This separation is intentional — the people creating the work should not be the same people signing off on it. This creates a natural quality gate.

Requesting an Approval

When you finish working on an artifact and believe it is ready, open it and click the Submit for Review button. You can optionally add a note explaining what you would like the reviewer to focus on.

All Admins and Owners on the project will be notified that an artifact is waiting for their review.

Reviewing and Approving

When you receive a review notification, open the artifact. You will see its current content along with any comments or discussion. After your review, you have two options:

  • Approve — Click Approve to sign off on the artifact. It moves to the Approved status and is locked from further edits.
  • Request Changes — Click Request Changes and add a comment explaining what needs to be updated. The artifact goes back to the author with your feedback.

Status Tracking Across the Board

Approval status is visible everywhere. On the project dashboard, you can see at a glance how many artifacts are in draft, under review, approved, or waiting for changes. This gives the whole team a clear picture of project progress without needing to open each artifact individually.

Traceability Graph

The traceability graph is a visual map of how all artifacts in a project connect to one another. It answers a fundamental question: “Why does this artifact exist, and what depends on it?”

How It Works

Every artifact in Audra Flow is linked to the artifacts it was derived from. A user story traces back to a use case, which traces back to a persona, which traces back to a goal. The traceability graph renders these connections as an interactive diagram.

To view the graph, open any project and click Traceability in the sidebar. You will see your project's artifacts arranged from high-level goals on the left to detailed delivery items on the right, with lines showing how they connect.

Using the Graph in Reviews

Before approving a deliverable, reviewers can use the traceability graph to verify that every user story traces back to a real user need. If a story has no connection to a persona or goal, it may be a sign that the work needs better justification.

Using the Graph in Audits

For compliance reviews or stakeholder presentations, the traceability graph provides a visual proof that your product decisions are grounded in research. You can see the complete chain from business goal to delivered feature, with every intermediate artifact visible.

Navigating the Graph

Click on any node in the graph to open that artifact in a side panel. From there you can read its contents, view its approval status, and jump to related artifacts. You can zoom in and out, and filter by artifact type to focus on the connections that matter most to you.

Audit Trail

The audit trail is an immutable record of every action taken in your Audra Flow workspace. It cannot be edited or deleted. This is your source of truth for who did what, and when.

What Gets Logged

Every meaningful action is recorded, including:

  • Creating, editing, and deleting artifacts.
  • Submitting artifacts for review and the outcome (approved or changes requested).
  • Adding and removing team members.
  • Changing a team member's role.
  • Changes to project settings and templates.
  • Sign-in and sign-out events.
  • Failed sign-in attempts.
  • AI agent usage — when an agent was invoked and what it produced.

Each log entry includes the person who performed the action, a timestamp, the type of action, and the artifact or resource that was affected.

Accessing the Audit Log

The audit log is available to Owners and Admins. To access it, go to Organization Settings and select the Audit Log tab. You can filter by date range, user, action type, or project to find specific entries.

Admins can also export the audit log in CSV format for use in external compliance tools or internal reviews.

What Stakeholders Can See

Editors, Viewers, and Guests do not have access to the organization-wide audit log. However, when they view an artifact, they can see a simplified activity timeline showing when the artifact was created, edited, and approved. This gives contributors useful context without exposing the full operational log.

Templates

Templates help your team work consistently across projects. Instead of starting from a blank page every time, you can use organization-wide templates that capture your team's best practices.

Organization-Wide Templates

Admins and Owners can create templates for any artifact type — goals, personas, user journeys, use cases, user stories, and more. Templates define the structure and default content that should appear when a team member creates a new artifact of that type.

For example, your organization might have a user story template that includes standard sections for acceptance criteria, definition of done, and testing notes. When an Editor creates a new user story, they start with this structure already in place.

Seeding Projects with Templates

When creating a new project, you can choose to seed it with a template pack. A template pack is a collection of templates that provides a starting point for the entire project, including suggested artifact structures for each delivery phase.

This is especially useful for organizations that run similar types of projects repeatedly. Instead of setting up the same structure from scratch, you start with a proven framework and customize it for the specific project.

Template Governance

Only Admins and Owners can create, edit, or delete templates. This ensures that templates remain consistent and reflect the organization's standards. Editors can suggest changes to templates, but those suggestions must be reviewed and approved by an Admin before they take effect.

Best Practices

Here are recommendations from teams that get the most out of Audra Flow's collaboration features.

Approve at Phase Transitions

Use approval gates at the boundaries between delivery phases. Before moving from Discovery to Definition, have an Admin or Owner review and approve the key Discovery artifacts (goals, interviews, competitor analysis). This creates a formal checkpoint that ensures the team is aligned before investing time in the next phase.

Use Comments for Context, Not Just Feedback

Comments are most valuable when they capture the reasoning behind decisions. Instead of just writing “Looks good,” explain why. For example: “Approved. The acceptance criteria cover the main user flow and the two edge cases we identified in the stakeholder interview.” Future team members will thank you when they need to understand why a decision was made.

Review Traceability Before Releases

Before packaging a release, open the traceability graph and verify that every feature traces back to a user need. This is a quick sanity check that helps you catch orphaned work (features that do not connect to any goal) and missing coverage (goals that do not have any features addressing them).

Keep the Audit Trail in Mind

Everything you do is logged. Use this to your advantage. When a stakeholder asks “Why did we change the scope?” or “Who approved this feature?”, you can point them to the audit trail instead of digging through old emails or chat messages.

Use Templates to Onboard New Team Members

When new people join your team, templates show them how your organization structures its work. Instead of explaining “this is how we write user stories here,” point them to the templates and let the structure speak for itself.

Mention People When You Need Action

Use @mentions deliberately. Mention the specific person who needs to take action, not the whole team. This keeps notifications relevant and ensures the right person sees the message. If you need a broader discussion, consider scheduling a review meeting instead of mentioning everyone.

Next Steps