Intermittent User Search Failures (Jan 2026)

Overview

'Capable for Confluence' and 'Approval for Confluence' are impacted by intermittent Confluence User Search API failures, causing unreliable user searches. Atlassian acknowledges this as P1 but has not posted publicly or provided a timeline for resolution.

Incident Description

Calls to the Confluence API /wiki/rest/api/search/user endpoints fail with 500 Internal Server Error: "UndeclaredThrowableException"` or async search exceptions.

This stops users from searching for and adding others to an approval request. Sometimes it works; other times, you get the error shown below.

This affects a subset of users and may be related to how many groups or sites a specific user has.

How do I know if I’m affected?

Workaround

We've investigated alternative APIs like /wiki/rest/api/search/user and GraphQL betas, but none fully match the dynamic CQL user querying needed in Forge apps for Capable Approval.

This intermittent Confluence Search API issue (tied to ongoing CQL limitations and spikes) often resolves with a 5-10 minute retry.

As a workaround, try inserting via /approval macro or adding approvers directly in the editor - some users report success bypassing the search dialog.

Incident Timeline