Stanki Guild

Guide · Jira

Jira approval reminders that repeat until the approver acts

Approval Flow for Jira 3.0.0 is the production version (30 October 2026). Last updated 1 November 2026. On the Atlassian Marketplace.

By Bartosz Stankiewicz, founder, Stanki Guild.

An approval request is sent once and then sits. If the approver does not open the e-mail, nothing happens until someone chases them by hand.

What Atlassian says

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The reminder request is JSDCLOUD-8369, "Approval Reminder Notification". When we read it on 30 October 2026 it had 296 votes, the status "Gathering Interest" and had been open since 2018-08-21. It states: "At the moment, there is no notification can be configured that could remind those that are selected to be an Approver of a request."

For Confluence page approvals, CONFCLOUD-82302, "Reminders for the Pending Approval request for the pages/Space", is open with 0 votes.

In the Community, a post on multi-level approvals says deadlines or reminders are "something you build yourself with Automation".

Native workaround

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A scheduled Jira Automation rule can look for work items that are still waiting and send a message. It works, and you own the rule, its schedule and its wording. It also uses Automation steps: Atlassian's usage page says "Every trigger, condition, action, branch, and loop that runs in a flow counts as a step" toward usage, and its announcement says "Allowance limits and billing for these meters will go into effect on December 3, 2026." We have not worked out how many steps a reminder rule would use on your site, so check your own allowance.

Option: reminders and escalation in Approval Flow

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In the Governance settings an administrator turns on Send reminders through Jira notifications. It is a paid setting and it is off by default.

  • The first reminder goes out after a number of days (default 2), then repeats at an interval (default every 2 days).
  • Escalation, default 0 days which means never, can go to the reporter, the assignee and whoever added the requirement.
  • Reminders go to named approvers who have not signed, their active substitute, and approver groups.
  • It is Jira's own notification e-mail, so nothing leaves Atlassian. Each reminder links to the My approvals page.
  • A job runs once an hour, and the admin page shows the last run: work items checked, reminders, escalations and failures.

Where this breaks: project roles cannot be listed by the app, so a requirement approved only by a role gets no reminder, only escalation. Reminders only notify; approvers still decide in Jira. And Jira's mobile apps do not show Forge apps, so on a phone the link has to be opened in the browser.

What we have not shown live yet

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Reminders and escalation are described in the documentation and covered by tests. We have not run them on a live site for this page.

Common questions

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Are reminders on by default?

No. An administrator has to turn them on, and they need a paid licence.

Does the app send its own e-mail?

No. It asks Jira to send its notification e-mail, so the e-mail comes from Jira.

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