Approval Reminders are now in Workflows for Confluence

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This is a much-awaited update many teams have been asking for. Approval reminders are now available in Workflows for Confluence, helping ensure important approvals don’t get stuck or forgotten.

Approvers can now receive email reminders when an approval is pending. This is especially useful for business-critical pages where timing matters and follow-ups used to happen manually.

How approval reminders work

Approval reminders are configured centrally by a Confluence Administrator in Global Settings → Notifications. Here you can define:

• Reminder cadence - how often reminders are sent (for example, one week after an approval becomes pending or after the last reminder)

• Reminder days and time - specific days and the hour reminders are sent
  Emails follow each user’s local time zone when available, otherwise UTC is used

Reminders are disabled by default, giving teams full control over when and where they are applied.

Enable reminders for a specific approval stage

Once global settings are configured, reminders must be enabled per approval stage:

1. Open the workflow in the Workflow Builder

2. Select the required approval stage

3. In General Configuration, enable Send Approval Reminders

4. Save the workflow

This allows you to use reminders only where they truly add value.

One important detail about time zones

To receive reminders in the correct local time, users need to make their time zone visible in Confluence:

• Go to Account Settings → Profile and visibility

• Find Local time

• Set visibility to Anyone

If this isn’t configured, reminders will be sent based on UTC.

Approval reminders close a very real use case in approval workflows. They support timely decisions, reduce manual chasing, and make approvals more predictable - exactly what many teams have been waiting for.