Which Sheet Automations Get a Human Approval Step, and Which Just Run?

Every Apps Script job built for a small team faces a critical decision: should it proceed uninterrupted, or should it halt and await human intervention? The consensus within the team is as follows: jobs that read, summarize, format, and solely modify data within the same spreadsheet without resulting in irreversible changes are allowed to run automatically.

Conversely, jobs that delete data, send information outside the company, or handle financial transactions must first write a plan and then wait for human review before executing the final steps.

To illustrate this point, the team conducted a dry run for Workspace offboarding. In this scenario, the reviewer is required to input the leaver's email address before the apply step can be executed. This is due to the ease with which a checkbox can be ticked without proper attention to the plan. The downside of this approval step is clear: every time the person who approves is away, the job idles at this point. Furthermore, a plan that goes unread essentially becomes an inefficient method of repeating the same mistakes.

For those who manage automations for small teams, the question arises: how do you determine the line between "just run" and "ask first"? Additionally, who steps in to approve when the usual approver is unavailable? There have been instances where teams have removed approval steps altogether because they deemed the approvers as unengaged and non-reading.