Why you can't edit the approval status field

On a table with posting rules, the approval status Select field refuses direct edits by default — from the grid, bulk edits, imports, automations and the API alike. An "Approved" in that column therefore always means a real decision by a real person, never a hopeful hand-edit. The hole this closes In most tools, an approval workflow ends by writing a status cell — and that cell remains an ordinary cell, editable by anyone with edit rights. The workflow is theatre: whatever ceremony produced "Approved", a hand-edit produces the identical value, and no reader can tell the difference afterwards. RowFold's approval status field deliberately refuses that. While the policy protects it, the value only moves through the flow itself — submitting, deciding, posting, unposting. Every surface that writes fields says no: the grid and drawer won't offer it, bulk edits and imports skip it and say so, automations that try fail with a named reason in their run log, and the API answers with a clean refusal. Everything downstream still works Protection is about who may write the field, not what it is. It remains an ordinary Select everywhere it's read — filters, boards, reports, automation triggers, the API — and when the flow writes it, that write fires automations and webhooks like any other edit. You lose nothing except the ability to fake it. Turning it off The policy has a switch, and an Admin can flip it — some teams migrating old data in bulk prefer a window where the field is writable. Leave it on once real work starts: the guarantee "this value always came from the flow" is the entire reason to trust the column, and it is not recoverable retroactively for values written while it was off. Tips • Importing history? Map old records' status during the import window, then protect the field before the table goes live — the guarantee starts the moment the switch is on. Good to know • An automation step that writes the protected field fails with a named reason in its run history — use a Request approval step, or trigger from the values the flow writes, instead of writing them. • Protection covers the policy's target field only; other Select fields on the table remain ordinary fields. Who can do what • The protection toggle is part of the posting rules, so only Admins can change it — and the refusal applies to Admins' own hand-edits too.