Approvers get no reminder for pending approvals
Nudge approvers until they act, and escalate to a backup when they don't.
A single approval email is easy to miss. Here is how to keep requests moving when an approver goes quiet.
The symptom
A request enters Pending approval, the approver is emailed once, and then nothing happens. The request sits untouched for days and the SLA quietly burns while everyone assumes someone else is on it.
Why Jira Service Management behaves this way
The native approval step fires one notification at the moment approval is requested. There is no built-in reminder cadence and no automatic escalation if the approver never responds.
The manual workaround — and why it falls short
Teams build automation rules that re-email approvers on a schedule, but these are brittle, hard to target to only the stalled approvals, and offer no clean hand-off to a backup approver.
How Patcher fixes it
Patcher sends configurable reminders to approvers until they act, and can escalate to a named backup approver after a time limit you set — so approvals stop being the bottleneck.
Turn it on
- Install Patcher for Jira Service Management from the Atlassian Marketplace.
- Open Patcher › Patches from your Jira Service Management admin.
- Find Approval reminders in the list and switch it on.
- Scope it to the projects you choose, then save — the fix is live immediately.