Feature Request: Ability to approve workflow runs from the mobile app

[deadlydog]

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GitHub has Environments that allow you to add Required reviewers, which effectively can block a workflow run until it is manually reviewed/approved. Here's the docs. This is a critical feature for many enterprise organizations, allowing them to block deployments to ensure it does not go out until the appropriate time.

Currently, the reviewers will get a notification that they need to approve the workflow run, but they are not able to approve it from the mobile app. They can view the workflow run, but there is no button to approve it. Instead, you currently need to log into the GitHub website from your phone (which often tries to redirect you back into the app) and approve the workflow run from there. The workflow run website page is not optimized for mobile though, so it's a bit of a pain to get to the button.

It would be great if the mobile app allowed you to approve workflow runs without needing to go to the website.

[alcere]

@deadlydog Thanks for your feedback. Approving deployments should be possible using the mobile app. Can you share with us the platform and app version you are using? I'd like to investigate this issue deeper. Thanks!

[deadlydog]

Hi @alcere , I'm using an iPhone 12 Pro iOS 17.3.1, with the latest GitHub App version 1.151.1.

Here's a screenshot of the workflow run shown in the app, either when clicking the "Review pending deployments" link in the approval email, or when manually navigating to the GitHub Actions workflow app manually in the app:

The only button that's available to click is "Cancel workflow"; there is no Review or Approve button.

Here's what the same workflow run looks like when I open it up in the browser (Edge in this case):

And this is what the approval on the website looks like when I click the "Review deployments" button:

Since I'm signed into the same account on both and everything works fine from the website, it should not be a permission issue.

[alcere]

Oh, I see! We only support opening the Deployment review dialog using notifications (Push notifications, or within the Notifications section) in the GitHub mobile app. But I totally understand your problem here; it should be possible too using the link or from the GitHub Action itself. I will open an internal issue to follow up on this and consider adding the option to approve deployments from those sources. Thank you for your feedback!

[deadlydog]

Thanks alcere. It's good to know that it's possible to approve from the notifications. I don't see any review/approval notifications for my deployments in the app, but I have disabled all of the push notifications within the app. I'm guessing if we disable the push notifications then that prevents them from showing up in the notifications section at all? I guess in the meantime, I'll enable the Deployment review push notification and see if approval notifications start showing up. Thanks!

[alcere]

Hey @deadlydog, I am sorry for the late response. Your push notification configuration shouldn't affect the type of notifications you receive. Were you able to receive review/approval notifications ?

[deadlydog]

Hey @alcere , I just updated to the latest version of the app (v1.183.0) on my iPhone and tested again. The behaviour is still the same as my original report. If I launch the app from the push notification then I see the approve button, but if I launch it from the link in the email notification or just open the GitHub app and navigate the Action manually then I only have a "Cancel workflow" button. If I navigate to the Notifications menu in the app, I do not have a notification for the Approval. If I have push notifications disabled (specifically the "Deployment Review" push notification type in the app), or I miss the push notification, the only way to approve it is to navigate to the Action in a web browser.

So in short, I don't see any change in behaviour since my original report of this issue.

[alcere]

Thanks for the details @deadlydog. Everything you have described seems to expected, except:

If I navigate to the Notifications menu in the app, I do not have a notification for the Approval.

Just to double check:

You should be able to see there a notification similar to this:

Can you confirm that you don't see it?

Thanks!

[deadlydog]

Thanks for following up @alcere . No, I do not see that notification. In this GitHub Action workflow run you can see the workflow ran on October 24th at 9:49am CST and I approved it at 10:09am CST.

Looking in the iPhone GitHub app notifications screen, you can see I received a notification about the pull request being created on Oct 24th and merged in, but nothing about a deployment review approval once the PR was merged in:

These are my GitHub app notification settings currently:

The only reason I have the "Deployment Review" push notification enabled is to work around this problem.

Hopefully this helps.

[sam-utila]

Any news regarding this?

This is a crucial workflow - especially for reviewing access for teammates on production environments, which we would like to do using the mobile app.

[mccrearyp]

I also need this feature

[YungBS]

This is a great idea, to develop the mobile app 💲✅🚀📍🧲

[Thepitufo13]

Yes i agree

[charlescrain]

Agree this would be a very helpful feature