Common questions

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Almost everything that looks broken in Capable Approval turns out to be one of the answers below. Work down to the one that matches what you are seeing.

#The approval option is missing from my page

Four reasons, in the order worth checking.

  1. Can you edit the page? Raising an approval needs edit permission. See Who can do what.

  2. Has your space turned off user updates? If so, only space administrators can raise approvals there.

  3. Does your space restrict who can raise approvals? You need to be on the allowed list. See Space settings.

  4. Are you using the suite? In the suite the approval entry only appears on pages that already have one, plus the ways to start a new one. In the standalone app it is always there.

#The status says Repair needed

The approval record and the copy shown on the page have drifted apart. Click repair. It rewrites the display from the record, and nothing is lost: your reviewers and their answers are safe.

You will also see it on approvals old enough to predate integrity checking. Repairing brings them up to date. See What is recorded.

#It has said Syncing for a while

For about two minutes after a page is edited, the approval shows In review while everything settles. If it is still saying it after a few minutes, reload the page, then use repair.

#The byline says expired but the banner does not

Both are right, briefly.

Surface

Shows

Because

The byline

EXPIRED

It works the state out from the date and flips the moment the deadline passes.

The banner

APPROVED

It waits for the hourly sweep to actually reset the approval.

They agree again within the hour, and the expiry notification arrives with the sweep too. See Expiry and re-approval.

#Somebody never got their notification

Check

Why

Can they read the page?

People who cannot read the page are skipped silently. This is the usual answer.

Have they turned off approval emails?

It is a per-person switch under Capable, Approval, Notifications.

For Slack, do their Confluence and Slack emails match?

Capable matches people by email. Different addresses means no Slack message, and nobody is told. See Slack.

#My approval is stuck and nobody is responding

Check whether people have commented rather than approved. A comment takes somebody out of the waiting list but counts toward nothing, so an approval where everyone commented will never finish and never expire. See Approval statuses explained.

#Two of us see different things on the same approval

Responses do not stream between people in real time. Reload to see what your colleague just did.

#My Slack buttons did not work

Message

Reason

This page changed since the request was sent

The page was edited, so the review restarted. Answer on the page.

You can no longer respond to this request

You were removed from the list, or lost access to the page.

No buttons at all

Either an administrator has not turned on Slack approval actions, or the space requires a code, which Slack cannot collect.

#Bulk approve failed on every page

Most likely the space requires an authenticator code. Bulk actions cannot send one, so every page in the batch fails. Respond individually there. See Sign approvals with a code.

Otherwise check you are actually a reviewer on the pages you selected. The buttons appear for any selected row, so pages you cannot act on fail individually and are listed at the end.

Search reads an index that updates a moment after the approval is written. Give it a few seconds and refresh. The page itself is always right immediately. See Search and reporting.

#I lost the phone with my authenticator

There are no backup codes. A Confluence administrator clears your enrolment from Site settings, Auth tokens, and then you set it up again.

Unstuck. Back to the actual work.