Approvals & Reminders

Approval actions send interactive messages to humans and collect their responses. When someone responds, CallMeLater notifies your system -- your code decides what happens next.

How it works

1. Create action -- You create an approval action with a message, recipients, and a callback_url.
2. CallMeLater sends reminder -- At the scheduled time, CallMeLater delivers the reminder via email or SMS.
3. Recipient responds -- The recipient clicks Confirm, Decline, or Snooze directly from the message (no login required).
4. CallMeLater calls your callback -- CallMeLater sends the response details to your callback_url. Your system decides what to do.

info

Approvals don't automatically execute anything. When someone responds, CallMeLater sends the response to your callback URL. Your system decides what to do next.

Recipients

Recipients are auto-detected by format:

Format	Channel	Example
Email address	Email	ops@example.com
E.164 phone number	SMS	+1234567890
Channel reference	Channel	channel:uuid

You can mix formats in the same action:

{
  "gate": {
    "recipients": ["ops@example.com", "+1234567890"]
  }
}

Confirmation modes

Mode	Behavior
first_response (default)	Completes as soon as any single recipient responds
all_required	Waits until every recipient has responded

Use first_response for general notifications where one confirmation is enough. Use all_required for critical approvals that need multiple sign-offs.

{
  "gate": {
    "confirmation_mode": "all_required",
    "recipients": ["cto@example.com", "security@example.com"]
  }
}

Response options

Action	Description
Confirm	Marks the action as executed and sends response details to your callback URL
Decline	Marks the action as failed and sends response details to your callback URL
Snooze	Reschedules the reminder to be sent again after a configurable period

Response comments

Recipients can add an optional comment (up to 500 characters) when they respond. Comments are available on all response types: confirm, decline, and snooze.

This is useful when recipients need to explain their decision, add context, or provide feedback — for example, a reviewer approving with conditions, or an expert adding a note to their validation.

Comments are stored on the recipient record and included in:

• The callback webhook payload sent to your system
• The action detail API response (recipients[].response_comment and reminder_events[].notes)
• The dashboard event timeline

No additional configuration is needed — the comment field is always available to recipients on the response page.

Snooze

Control how many times recipients can snooze with max_snoozes:

{
  "gate": {
    "max_snoozes": 3
  }
}

• Default: 5
• Set to 0 to disable snoozing entirely (hides the snooze button)
• When the snooze limit is reached, the snooze option disappears from subsequent reminders

Token expiry

Response links expire after a configurable duration. Once expired, the action moves to expired status and the links stop working.

{
  "gate": {
    "timeout": "7d"
  }
}

• Default: 7d (7 days)
• Configurable per action via gate.timeout (e.g., "3d", "12h", "7d")

Escalation

If nobody responds within a time window, CallMeLater can automatically notify escalation contacts.

{
  "gate": {
    "message": "Approve the production deployment",
    "recipients": ["team@example.com"],
    "escalation": {
      "contacts": ["manager@example.com"],
      "after_hours": 4
    }
  }
}

• escalation.contacts -- array of email addresses or phone numbers to notify if no response is received
• escalation.after_hours -- hours to wait before escalating (minimum 0.5)
• If a contact has no prefix (like channel:), email is assumed automatically

Escalation is about getting human attention when the original recipients are unresponsive. It is separate from retries, which handle technical delivery failures.

Team members

Instead of using raw email addresses and phone numbers in your API calls, you can create contacts in Settings > Team Members and reference them by member ID:

{
  "gate": {
    "recipients": ["member-uuid-1", "member-uuid-2"]
  }
}

CallMeLater looks up each member's contact details and sends to the appropriate channel. Responses are tracked with team member attribution.