Your project management tool is humming along as it should, with all your tasks assigned, deadlines tracked, and everyone knowing what they're working on. But when it's time to review that new video campaign, suddenly the world ends. Feedback comes from everywhere all at once, and by the time you've collected everyone's input, you've got three different versions floating around. The thing is, this isn't your team's fault. It's not even your project management tool's fault. Platforms like monday.com, Asana, and ClickUp are brilliant at what they do, but they were never built to handle the messy, iterative, deeply collaborative process of creative review and approval. Below, we'll show you exactly where project management tools fall short when it comes to online proofing, and more importantly, how pairing your existing PM platform with a purpose-built proofing solution can transform your creative workflows without disrupting the systems you already have in place.
The thing is, this isn't your team's fault. It's not even your project management tool's fault. Platforms like monday.com, Asana, and ClickUp are brilliant at what they do, but they were never built to handle the messy, iterative, deeply collaborative process of creative review and approval.
Below, we'll show you exactly where project management tools fall short when it comes to online proofing, and more importantly, how pairing your existing PM platform with a purpose-built proofing solution can transform your creative workflows without disrupting the systems you already have in place.
Let’s imagine the average patchwork review and approval process.
You export an updated draft of a banner ad “FINAL_v3_actuallyFINAL.psd” and email it to five stakeholders. The creative director replies with, “Looks great!” The brand team replies with 47 comments. The CMO responds two weeks later… to the original version. And the client is messaging you on the side in Slack asking about copy updates.
Now you’re reconciling out-of-sync feedback, guessing which comments are still relevant, and re-uploading files for the sixth time, all while trying to hit a deadline that was yesterday.
Is any of this giving you flashbacks?
This is the patchwork proofing nightmare that has become the status quo for many teams. A mix of emails, Slack threads, PDFs, comment bubbles, and “Can you just Slack me that one change?” Ziflow exists to end the madness.
In this post, we’ll show why teams outgrow this chaotic workflow and how Ziflow online proofing centralizes feedback, streamlines approvals, and keeps projects moving forward.
You send out the latest design and wait for feedback. The creative director wants a new headline; while the CMO suggests a completely different headline on a separate thread. Legal spots a typo — but on an older version. And the client? They respond a week later to “Final_v3” with completely different feedback. Without centralized comments or version control, conflicting input turns even the simplest project into a guessing game.
Ziflow keeps feedback focused by consolidating comments, versions, and approvals into a single platform, so no one’s reviewing the wrong file or duplicating input.
When the tools aren’t connected, you become the process. You’re the one sending reminders, uploading new files, cross-referencing approvals, and chasing down feedback like it’s your side hustle.
Ziflow eliminates the need for this human middleware by automating review stages, routing files based on decisions, and notifying the right people at the right time. You stay out of the weeds, and the work keeps moving.
If your business needs compliance or a paper trail for approvals, patchwork workflows just won’t cut it. Try proving that a design was approved by the right people, on time, using a string of Slack messages and email replies. It's not just inefficient, it’s risky.
Ziflow automatically logs every decision, timestamp, and comment. With secure e-signatures, version history, and audit-ready logs, you always know who approved what and when.
Comments in PDFs. Thoughts on Slack. A last-minute note from the CEO sent via email (with a screenshot of an outdated version). Feedback lives everywhere except where the work lives. Tracking it all becomes a part-time job, and not a very rewarding one.
Ziflow brings feedback directly onto the asset, whether it's a video, PDF, website, or image, so everyone is looking at the same thing and speaking the same language.
You’ve got a high-res InDesign file ready for review, but guess who doesn’t have Adobe Creative Cloud? Pretty much everyone outside your design team. So the designer has to export a flattened PDF, resize it for email, upload it to Drive, paste the link in Slack… and then do it all again after every minor change. Multiply that by five reviewers and three rounds of edits, and you’ve got a full-time job in exporting.
Ziflow skips the export headaches. Stakeholders can open, view, and comment on over 1,200 file types. Designers stay in their tools, reviewers stay in the loop, and no one has to ask, “Can you send it in a different format?”
Creative campaigns don’t just have one file type, they’re a full experience. But when you’re stuck reviewing PDFs in one place, videos in another, and web pages in… whatever tool kind of supports them, it’s impossible to see how everything fits together.
Acrobat doesn’t integrate with project management tools like monday.com, Asana, or Jira, so approvals stay siloed from project tracking. Ziflow integrates natively with your existing stack, ensuring proof status and tasks stay in sync automatically.
Ziflow lets you review entire campaigns in one view, every asset type, every format, every stage so your team can collaborate holistically and make smarter creative decisions faster.
Just because you move creative reviews into Ziflow doesn’t mean your team has to abandon the tools they already live in. Ziflow integrates seamlessly with Slack and Microsoft Teams, so you can get real-time updates on new comments, approval decisions, and workflow stages — right where your team is already communicating.
Need more control? Ziflow’s email notifications are fully customizable. You can decide exactly who gets notified, when, and for what — so the right people stay informed without flooding everyone’s inbox. Whether you're in Slack, Microsoft Teams, or managing approvals on the go, Ziflow makes sure feedback never falls through the cracks.
Teams don’t stick with the patchwork because it works, they stick with it because it’s what they know. But the cost of doing nothing is high: delayed campaigns, frustrated creatives, and missed opportunities for improvement.
Ziflow replaces the mess with clarity. It brings structure to chaos, without asking your team to change everything overnight. You don’t have to stop using email, Slack, or your PM tool, but you should stop relying on them to manage creative approvals.
“The biggest problem Ziflow solves for us is the number of stakeholders for projects that must provide feedback. We used to send email back and forth, but this led to a highly disorganized experience for the design team and things would get lost in the shuffle. Now we can receive feedback from dozens of stakeholders per project and keep it all organized and use the 'checklist' features to make sure changes get addressed.”
We used to do all reviews by email, but it was hard to consolidate, and sometimes the wrong version was referred back to. This has saved countless manual hours of management and tracking.
“Ziflow brought our creative proofing process into the 21st century. From emails, hard copies, and conflicting edits, to a streamlined, unified proofing experience. We love it and so does our Legal team.”
Absolutely. Ziflow centralizes feedback, tracks versions, and automates workflows — while email and Slack create silos and manual follow-ups.
Ziflow supports external reviewers and guests with configurable permissions, so clients, partners, or legal teams can review and approve files without needing a full account or access to your internal systems.
Not at all. Ziflow integrates directly with monday.com, Asana, Jira, and others to keep your task flows in sync.
If you’re managing multiple rounds of feedback across email, Slack, PDFs, and shared drives — and it’s leading to delays, duplicate work, or confusion, it’s time. Teams that produce content regularly (especially across formats) benefit from having a central place to manage creative feedback and approvals.
Most teams get up and running in less than a week. Ziflow’s intuitive interface and dedicated onboarding make it easy to adopt without disrupting your entire tech stack.
Not with Ziflow. The UI is intuitive and reviewers don’t need to learn complex software. Most users can review and comment on a file with zero training and you can send proofs via email or Slack with direct links, making onboarding seamless.
If you’re tired of rework, wasted time, and scattered feedback, Ziflow is the upgrade you didn’t know you needed. With proven results, like saving teams 10+ hours per user per week and reducing late projects by 58%. Ziflow doesn’t just support your review process, it transforms it.