What are approvals?

Some requests might need approval before they can move to the next status in their workflow. For example:

• Requests for new system accounts may need to be approved by an IT manager.

• A cell phone purchase over a certain value might need to be approved by a group of people that might include someone from Information Security, someone from IT, and a Finance manager.

• Leave requests may need to be approved by an employee’s direct manager.

Approvers don't need a Jira Service Management license to approve requests – they just have to be customers of the service project. Learn more about users and roles in Jira Service Management.

You can add an approval step to any status in any request type’s workflow. Learn more about workflows.

How approvals work

Once you’ve added an approval step to a workflow status:

1. A person creates a Jira Service Management request.

2. The request transitions to a status that has an approval step.

3. The designated approvers are notified by email that they need to approve or decline the request.

4. The approvers approve or decline the request, either from the help center, directly from the email, or in Slack or Microsoft Teams.

5. The request transitions to the next status in the workflow, and the person who submitted the request is notified of any comments that the approver added.

Learn how to add an approval to a workflow.