Approved, Unapproved, and Managed Services Explained

When Substly detects a new SaaS tool being used by an employee, it’s automatically marked as Unapproved and listed on the Unapproved Services page.

This list shows all services discovered by our discovery engine — based on employee logins and usage of B2B SaaS tools.

From the Unapproved Services page, you can see key details about each service, including:

If a service aligns with your organization’s policies and you want to include it in your approved portfolio, you can mark it as Approved in Substly.

Once approved, the service will move to the Approved Services page.

Approved services unlock additional functionality, allowing you to:

This helps you keep everything related to approved services organized in one place.

By default, all services in Substly are set to Auto-Managed.

This means Substly automatically creates user–service connections based on detected usage.

If someone starts using a new service, Substly automatically links them to that service and assigns a license.

This setup is great if you want a hands-free, accurate overview of what’s being used across your organization — without any manual work.

You can switch a service to Admin-Managed at any time.

In Admin-Managed mode, license assignments are handled manually by an admin.

Substly will still detect when users access the service, but it won’t assign a license automatically.
​

Instead, the usage will appear as unsanctioned for the individual user until an admin reviews and assigns a license manually.

This gives you more control and helps ensure that licenses are only assigned when truly needed.

Once you understand the difference between Auto-Managed and Admin-Managed, you might want to update how a specific service is handled.

Here’s how to change the setting:

That’s it! Your change takes effect immediately, and Substly will start handling license assignments based on your new setting.

If you switch a service to Admin-Managed, Substly will still detect usage — but it will no longer assign licenses automatically.
​

Instead, the usage will appear as unsanctioned for the individual user until an admin reviews and assigns a license manually.

A service can combine these statuses in different ways — for example:

This flexibility enables you to balance automation and control in a way that fits your organization best.

Start with automation.

Let Substly automatically build user–service connections based on real usage data.

For the best results, enable both the integration with Microsoft Entra ID or Google Workspace and the Substly Extension.

Once the Substly Extension is installed, it begins to populate user–service connections as employees use different SaaS tools. Data is synced to your Substly account every 30 minutes, ensuring your overview is always up to date.

Unlike the integrations with Entra ID and Workspace, the Substly Extension monitors only future activity. This means your overview will gradually improve over time as more user activity is detected.

To get a complete and reliable picture of your organization’s SaaS usage, we recommend keeping the Substly Extension active for at least 6–8 weeks. This allows enough time for employees to return from leave and for less frequently used services to be detected.

Once you’ve collected sufficient usage data, you can switch selected services to Admin-Managed mode — giving you more control over license assignments and spend, while still benefiting from the automation Substly provides.