Why page statuses in Confluence aren’t enough for approval workflows

[#1]

Confluence is a powerful tool for knowledge sharing, and page statuses are often seen as a simple way to bring order into content. With just a few clicks, a page can be marked as Draft, In Review, or Final, giving readers a sense of where it stands.

At first glance, this feels like an approval process. But here’s the problem: page statuses are not real workflows.

In this post, I’ll cover what page statuses offer, where they fall short, and how teams can implement approval workflows that actually work.

What Confluence page statuses offer

Page statuses are helpful for signaling intent. A draft guide might be marked as Draft, then moved to In Review once feedback is requested, and finally set to Final when it’s ready to use.

This makes it easy to communicate at a glance:

• A page isn’t finished yet.

• A page is under review.

• A page is ready to share widely.

For small teams with simple documentation needs, this may feel like “good enough.” But when teams begin to treat statuses like actual workflows, the cracks show quickly.

The limitations of page statuses

Confluence page statuses are flexible in theory, but that flexibility is also their weakness. Because each space can define its own five statuses, there’s no consistency across the organization. One space might use Draft → In Review → Final, while another chooses Open → Ongoing → Completed. The meaning is arbitrary, and there’s no workflow logic behind them.

Other limitations include:

• No workflow logic → a page marked In Review behaves the same as Final. Anyone can skip steps.

• Configured per space → admins duplicate work, and consistency breaks down.

• Maintenance issues → removing a status leaves old pages showing outdated banners.

• No global view → managers can’t see all “In Review” pages across spaces.

And since a page must be published before teammates can collaborate, unreviewed content often goes live just to collect feedback. That blurs the line between editing and publishing.

In practice, this can create confusion and even risk. Imagine a security policy page marked Final but still containing unapproved changes — employees might follow outdated instructions without realizing it.

In short: page statuses are visual indicators, not workflows.

👉 We’ve also explored other Confluence approval workarounds (like @mentions and restrictions) in this blog post.

Why this matters

When Confluence is used as a source of truth, these gaps undermine confidence:

• Readers lose trust when “final” content turns out to be wrong.

• Compliance teams can’t prove approvals.

• Managers lack visibility into drafts vs. approved content.

Over time, Confluence shifts from a reliable knowledge base into a system people second-guess.

A structured approach to page approvals in Confluence

This is where third-party apps from the Atlassian Marketplace can help.

Our app Breeze introduces working copies. Instead of editing the live page, authors work in a private copy that can be reviewed and approved before changes are published.

👉 You can learn more about working copies in the Breeze documentation.

Breeze also adds:

• Six predefined statuses → consistent, workflow-driven.

• Dedicated views → see all drafts, reviews, or outdated pages at once.

• Approvals, presets, notifications, and audit logs → accountability built in.

By combining structure with simplicity, Breeze makes approvals in Confluence possible — without adding unnecessary complexity.

👉 Learn more about Breeze on the Atlassian Marketplace

[Grace Lee]

I’ve seen the same thing happen in teams where statuses get treated as actual workflows. It works fine at first, but once multiple spaces or compliance requirements come into play, the inconsistencies and lack of structure become a real issue. The point you made about unreviewed content being published just to collect feedback really resonates , that can create confusion fast. Having something that separates “work in progress” from “live content” seems like a key step in making Confluence more reliable as a source of truth.

[Adrian Hülsmann - B1NARY]

Hi @Grace Lee

Thank you for your comment. Precisely for this reason - separating "work in progress" content from "live and approved" content - Breeze introduces the concept of working copies. 

Working copies allow separating editing pages from approving and publishing updates. 

If you'd like to see how this works in practice, feel free to schedule an appointment with me. 

All the best,
Adrian

[Stavros_Rougas_EasyApps]

Confluence pages statuses in general make so much sense, in part as they follow a Jira/kanban logic most are by now familial with. To get approvals done need a common basis of understanding.

In theory statues are fairly up to date, in reality need to reviewed and updated. If not you have lost the power of the single source of truth.

We recently added a feature to bulk change Confluence pages statuses across a space to Space Content Manager. It can only work per space, not across spaces, as status names can differ per space so the feature is under Space apps not Apps.