Approving a Drafted Reply

What arrives

When auto-reply is set to draft for approval, you get an email with the original review and the drafted reply. Clicking through opens an approval page showing both again, with three choices: approve and publish, edit first, or discard.

Opening the email publishes nothing

This matters more than it sounds. Mail apps and security scanners routinely fetch every link in a message before a human sees it. If the link itself published the reply, a scanner could post to your customers on your behalf.

So the link only opens the page. The reply is published when you press the button on it, which is the first moment a person is definitely involved. If you ever see a reply published that you did not press for, that is worth reporting.

You do not need to be logged in

The link carries a single-use token, so it works from your phone without signing in. Two consequences follow:

• Treat the email as sensitive. Anyone you forward it to can publish that reply.
• The link works once. After you approve or discard, it is spent. Opening it again shows the outcome rather than the buttons.

Editing before publishing

Edit first lets you change the wording on the page and publish your version. The edit is what gets posted, and the record shows it was edited rather than approved as drafted.

If nothing happens or the link has expired

• Already actioned. Someone else on your team may have approved it. Check Auto-reply activity in Settings.
• The review changed. If the customer deleted or edited the review, the draft is dropped rather than published against something that no longer exists.
• The platform rejected it. Google and Facebook can both refuse a reply, usually because the connection needs reauthorising. The activity list shows the error.

You can always reply by hand from the Reviews page instead. Discarding a draft never stops you answering yourself.