Asking for a tool

Fill in one card, see what Velory has checked about the tool and what your company already has for the job, say what data goes into it, and send it. If you are asked to approve, you answer from the email.

Your company can share one link that lets anyone ask for a tool. You fill in one card, your manager (or whoever you pick) gets an email, and they approve or decline it from there.

In this guide:

• Asking for a tool
• What the card tells you before you send
• Who your request goes to
• Checking what happened to your request
• Approving or declining, if you are asked
• What your manager and your admins can see

Asking for a tool

1. Open the request link your company shared.
2. Sign in with Google, the same way you sign in to take an assessment. You need to be on your company’s people list.
3. Type the tool’s name. Suggestions appear as you type, so pick one if the tool you want is there.
4. Select Check. The card reloads with what Velory has checked about the tool and what your company already has for the same job.
5. Write Why we need it: what it is for, and what it does that your current tools do not.
6. Under What data goes into it, pick the most sensitive data anyone would put into it: 1 Public, 2 Internal, 3 Confidential or 4 Restricted. You have to pick one.
7. Check Approver. It is your manager unless you change it (see below).
8. Select Send for approval.

If the tool is not one Flow knows, you are asked for its category as well, so the card can still compare it with what you already have. If you change the name after selecting Check and the new one is not a tool Flow knows, the category box comes back and you are asked to fill it in before sending.

If your company already has the tool, the card says so as soon as you select Check and sending is turned off. Ask whoever owns it for access instead; that is usually faster than a purchase anyone has to approve.

You can have five requests waiting at once. Once one is answered you can send another.

What the card tells you before you send

After you select Check, a box under the tool name shows:

• AI inside: whether the tool has AI in it, as Velory checked it on the vendor’s own site.
• Data region: where the tool keeps its data, with a link to the vendor page Velory checked and the date it was checked.
• Already approved: the tools your company already has in the same category, and where each keeps its data.

If the tool is not one Velory has checked, the box says so and shows only Already approved. Flow does not guess facts about a tool.

When you pick what data goes into it, the card compares your choice with your company’s approved AI policy. If a rule looks like it rules out that kind of data in this tool, the rule appears under your choice, for example “May clash with your policy: No customer data and no secrets go into an AI tool.” The check matches words in the rule, so it can miss a rule or show one that does not apply. You can still send the request, and your approver sees the same line.

If a tool you already have does the job, ask for access to that instead. If it does not, say why in Why we need it. That is the part your approver reads.

Who your request goes to

Your approver is your manager, taken from your company’s own people list. The card names them under Approver before you send.

If the people list does not say who your manager is, or if your manager has left, the request goes to your company’s admins instead. The card says so.

Sending it to someone else

Some requests belong with somebody else, for example the budget owner or IT. To pick a different approver:

1. Under Approver, select Change. The card reloads with a short list, and everything you typed is kept.
2. Pick one:
   • your manager, who is ticked by default,
   • Company admins, if your company has any besides you. Every admin gets their own link, and the first answer counts.
   • someone else on your people list. Type at least two letters of their name or email in the search box, select Search, and pick them from the results.
3. Select Send for approval.

When the request goes to someone other than your manager, your manager gets a copy of the email for their information. Their copy has no link, so they cannot decide it. Your company admins see who each request went to on their Tools page.

You can pick anyone on your company’s people list except yourself. If the person you picked leaves the people list before you send, the card says so and asks you to pick someone else.

You are never your own approver. If you are an admin yourself, a request sent to Company admins goes to the other admins.

If the card says Nobody yet, there is no manager on your people list for you and no other admin who could answer. The list opens by itself: pick someone on your people list, or ask an admin to set your manager on the People page and send it again.

Checking what happened to your request

Open the same link again. Under the card, Your requests lists everything you have asked for. Each row shows when you sent it, who it went to, and a label for where it has got to: waiting, approved and not added yet, added to tools, declined, or closed.

Select a row to open that request. The page shows what you sent: the tool, your reason, and who approves it. Under that are three steps with a date on each finished one:

1. Sent.
2. Your manager decides, or the person you picked, or your company’s admins if the request went to them.
3. It joins your company’s tools.

The page is read-only. You cannot change or withdraw a request after you send it. Only you can open it: if you send the address to somebody else, they get a page saying there is no request of theirs at that address.

Under Approver the page says who the request went to and whether that is your manager, for example “Cleo Lind · not your manager”. If the request went to your company’s admins, the page says “Your company’s admins” even after one of them has answered. It does not say which admin it was.

One request can read as approved and then closed. That means your manager said yes and an admin stopped it before it was added to the tool list, usually because the company got the tool another way. Your manager’s answer stays on the record either way.

You also get one email when your request is decided.

Approving or declining, if you are asked

This is for managers, for company admins, and for anyone somebody picked as their approver. You get one email per request. It carries the tool, what the company already has in the same category, and the reason the person gave.

Select the link in it. There is no sign-in: the link itself is how you get in. The link is yours alone, which is how the request records who answered.

When a request goes to the admins rather than to one manager, every admin gets their own link and the first answer is the one that counts. If a colleague answers first, your link still opens and shows you what they decided.

The page shows the request with Decline and Approve. Above the reason, Before you approve lists:

• Data: the data class the person picked.
• AI inside: whether the tool is an AI tool, an add-on or neither. Until Velory has checked the tool, it says Not verified and links the vendor page it was found on.
• Data region: where the tool keeps its data, with the vendor page and the date. For a tool Velory has not checked, this is what Flow found on the tool’s own website when the request was sent, and it says not checked by Velory.
• Vendor pages: links to the tool’s DPA, sub-processor list and trust center, where the vendor publishes them.
• Policy: a rule in your company’s approved AI policy that may clash with that data in this tool, if the check found one. It reads the rules approved today, so it can show a rule the person was not warned about when they sent it.
• Already approved: the tools your company already has for the same job.

Pick one.

You answer once. Open the link again and it shows you what you decided, with no way to change it. The link stops working after 30 days, and after that the request is still on your company’s Tools page where an admin can see it. There is no box for a reason, so if you want to explain a decline, reply to the person directly.

Your link also stops deciding if you stop being the person who should answer: when somebody else becomes that person’s manager, when you come off the admin list, or, if you were picked, when you leave the people list. It still opens and shows you the request; it just cannot answer any more.

If you are the person’s manager and they sent the request to someone else, you get a copy for your information. It has no link, and there is nothing for you to decide.

Approving does not add the tool. Once your company has it, an admin selects Add to tools on the request, and that is when it joins the company’s tool list.

What your manager and your admins can see

Your request is a record of a decision, so your company keeps it. On it: the tool, your reason, the data class you picked, who asked, and who answered.

Your name reaches the person who decides: it is in the email they get and on the card they open. If you sent it to someone other than your manager, your name is also in your manager’s copy. Your company admins see the request on their Tools page with your team on it, not your name, and who it went to.

Nothing else about you is attached. This is separate from any assessment you have taken, and nothing you wrote here reaches your results or anyone else’s.

If your Flow data is erased, your address comes off the request and your decision link is deleted. The decision stays, because it is your company’s record of what it approved, and so does the reason you wrote, with any address inside it removed.