Request and manage approvals in Confluence
Use approvals to request formal signoff on a Confluence page. Approvals help teams review important content, capture decisions, and keep a record of decisions made.
Approvals are useful for work that requires clear accountability and traceability, such as policies, procedures, launch plans, legal reviews, finance documents, or other business-critical pages.
Before you begin
Approvals are available only on Premium and Enterprise plans.
Approvals are supported on pages, but not on live docs or blog posts.
You need permission to edit a page to request or respond to an approval.
Space admins can configure space-level approval settings, including required approvers and requiring approval before publishing.
Request an approval
Open the Confluence page that needs approval.
Open the content status menu.
Select Start approval to begin configuring your approval request.
Add the people who need to approve the page.
Optionally, add a message with context and a due date for the approval.
Select Start.
Confluence will notify the approvers and track the approval’s progress on the page.
Respond to an approval request
Open the page from the approval notification or from Confluence.
Review the page content.
Select Respond in the approval banner below the page byline to open the approval panel.
Select Approve or Request changes to submit your response. If desired, include a comment about your decision before submitting. You can edit your response until the approval is complete.
The approval status on the page updates to reflect your input. Others can see whether the page is still waiting for approval, has been approved, or requires changes.
View approval progress and history
Open the approval panel to see the current status of an approval in progress, including who's been asked to review, who has responded, and what's still pending.
To see the full history, open the activity log. It shows past approval cycles, including who requested approval, who approved the page or requested changes, any comments, and when each decision happened.
About content statuses in view and edit mode
Content statuses are now managed independently in view mode and edit mode.
Changing a page's content status in view mode updates only the published page. The status isn't carried over to the draft in edit mode.
Changing a page's content status in edit mode updates the draft. The new status is applied to the published page when the changes are published.
Best practices
Use approvals for pages that need a clear record of signoff.
Add only the reviewers required for the decision.
Use due dates when a review is time-sensitive.
Configure approval space settings
Space admins can set space-level rules that control how approvals work for everyone in the space. These settings let you enforce approval before publishing, restrict who can approve, and keep approved content current over time.
Manage approval settings on the Status and approvals screen in your space settings.
Before you begin
You need to be a space admin to view or change these settings.
Approvals must be turned on for the space. In the Status and approvals settings, set the mode to Enable statuses with approvals.
Choosing Enable statuses only or Disabled hides the approval settings described below.
Changes to these settings apply to all pages in the space.
Require approval before publishing
Use this setting to make sure new pages are signed off before they go live.
In the Approvals settings, turn on Require approval before publishing.
When turned on, new pages must have approval before publishing.
Set required approvers
Use this setting to limit who's allowed to approve pages across the space.
In the Approvals settings under Required approvers, search for and select the people you want to set as required approvers (maximum of five).
Select Add.
Turn the toggle on to enforce the setting.
When turned on, all approvals in this space are limited to the approvers you've added. You need to add at least one approver before the setting can be turned on. You can remove an approver at any time from the list.
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