Approvals are where a lot of service requests go to wait. Jira Service Management emails the approver once when a request needs sign-off. If they miss that email — and busy approvers often do — nothing follows up. The request sits in Pending approval indefinitely.
Why it happens
JSM fires a single approval notification and then relies on the approver remembering to come back. There is no built-in nudge and no escalation if the approver is on leave.
The usual workarounds
- Agents chasing approvers over chat and email, outside the ticket.
- Dashboards someone has to watch to spot stuck approvals.
- Automation rules that are fiddly to build and easy to break.
How Patcher fixes it
Patcher sends configurable reminders to approvers until they act, and can escalate to a backup approver after a set time — so approvals stop being the bottleneck. It runs on Forge and toggles per project.