Would a multi-approver app (quorum + audit trail) be considered duplicative of native Approvals?

English Forum Developers & API App Components
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Hi all,

I’m scoping an app for the App Directory and I’d rather ask about scope before building it
than find out at review. The app sits close to a native feature on purpose, so I want to be
upfront about that and hear whether you’d see it as a complement or as duplication.

What the app does

Quorum adds multi-approver governance to Asana. Asana’s built-in Approvals cover a single
approver on a single task. Quorum is for decisions that need several people: require
any 1 of 3, a quorum of 2 of 3, or unanimity – with a complete, append-only audit trail of
who decided what and when, exportable for compliance.

Concretely, the three decision rules are: any 1 of N, a quorum of M of N, and unanimity.
Every event (requested, approved, rejected, commented, reassigned, cancelled) is written to
an append-only trail, mirrored back as a task comment so it’s visible in Asana’s own activity
feed, and exportable for audit purposes. The request itself is an attached resource with a
widget on the task showing live quorum progress (“2 of 3”).

Why I believe there’s a gap rather than an overlap

Native Approvals are a single-approver task type, and an approval task is marked complete
regardless of the outcome. Multi-approver scenarios come up repeatedly here without a working
answer:

The usual workaround – one approval subtask per approver – doesn’t hold up: approved subtasks
don’t advance the parent workflow, and there’s no notion of “2 of 3 is enough”.

My question

Would an app like this be reviewed as a legitimate complement to native Approvals, or as
functional duplication that wouldn’t be accepted into the App Directory?

And more generally: is there any published guidance on how close a third-party app may sit to
a native Asana capability before it’s considered duplicative? I couldn’t find anything on this
in the app listing guidelines, and I’d rather calibrate now than guess.

Happy to share more detail on the design if that helps.

Thanks!

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@Kevin_Blanco @Mikhail_Melikhov @Dominik_Brdak from Asana can likely answer.

I don’t work for Asana but as a third party developer who has worked closely with Asana for a number of years, I’m not aware that they do any evaluation of the actual content and features of an Asana app, but just insure that it follows their guidelines of a well-behaved app.

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Hi @KYC_Checks, and welcome to the forum!

@Phil_Seeman is correct here (thanks, Phil!).

When reviewing apps for the Asana App Directory, we don’t evaluate the business value or commercial viability of an integration. Instead, our review focuses on whether the app meets our security, quality, and user experience requirements, as outlined in our developer documentation:

If you believe your integration would provide value to Asana users, you’re more than welcome to submit it for review. We’d be happy to review your submission, answer any questions you have throughout the process, and help resolve any issues we identify during the review.

We look forward to your submission!

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