Getting started

Learn how to set up PullApprove for your organization.

Install the GitHub App

PullApprove v4 is a GitHub App that interacts with the GitHub API, giving you new tools to manage pull requests across your organization.

You'll be given the option of installing PullApprove on all repositories or selecting them individually. You can change this later, so feel free to choose a couple of specific repos to see how it works.

When you first install the app, it will run in a "read-only" mode. No commit statuses (or review requests or comments) will be sent to GitHub. This way you can see what PullApprove would do without affecting everyone's workflow. Once you know how it works and have set up your review workflows, you can enable the full integration.

Install on GitHub

Review phases

In PullApprove, every pull request will step through a series of review phases. These can include human code review, but you can also include static checks/requirements before and after the code review takes place.

Every installation starts with three default phases:

1. Pre-review - "draft" pull requests will be held here until they're ready for review
2. In review - by default, all pull requests will require a basic human code review
3. Approved - the final phase, where pull requests are ready to merge and the GitHub status is "success"

When statuses are enabled, the current phase for a PR will be shown in GitHub. The status will be "pending" until it makes it to the final "Approved" phase.

You can use this commit status to make pullapprove4 a required status check in your GitHub protected branch settings.

Review teams

You'll notice that the "In review" phase has a requirement that teams.all_approved. This is where the "human review" requirement gets tied in.

Teams are managed under "Reviewers", and each PullApprove team can define additional conditions for which pull requests they need to review, how many approvals are required, and how reviewers are chosen.

Because each team can have their own requirements, you can set up a more fine-grained review process than simply "require X approvals".

To start, you'll be given a generic "Code review" team with yourself as the only member.

Next steps

Now that you have connected PullApprove to your GitHub organization, you can start designing your code review process!

You can achieve a variety of different workflows by configuring your phases and teams.