Confluence Approval workflow

[Freek]

In the 'old' Confluence environment we established an approval workflow but since Confluence has been migrated to Atlassian, this workflow is missing.

How can we get it back?

The proces was described as follows:

WI CG4001.3 Approval of the new P/WI - ENSE - Confluence (atlassian.net)

[marc -Collabello--Phase Locked-]

Hi @Freek Otsen ,

Confluence cloud has no approval workflow built in.

For most use cases you must use a marketplace addon.  We make Document Control for Confluence Cloud (free trial), and you can try different apps and see which one fits into your workflow and compliance requirements.

[Flowdence]

Hi @Freek Otsen ,

Losing an established approval workflow during migration is a common frustration — especially when you had a documented process like your WI CG4001.3 for policy approvals.

Unfortunately, Confluence Cloud doesn't include a built-in approval workflow equivalent to what many teams had on Server/Data Center (often through Comala, Ad Hoc Workflows, or similar apps). The native page statuses and automation rules can handle basic status tracking, but they don't provide the structured approval flow, audit trail, or version control that a documented quality process like yours requires.

The good news is there are several Cloud-native Marketplace apps that can help you rebuild (and often improve on) your original workflow. A few things to look for when evaluating, especially for policy and work instruction approvals:

- Version-aware approvals — approval is bound to the specific page version, so if the content is edited after approval, the status is automatically invalidated. This is important for quality management processes where you need to know that what was approved is what's currently published.
- Audit trail — who approved what, when, and which version — visible on the page and exportable for compliance reviews.
- Multi-step workflows — sequential approval chains (e.g., author → reviewer → approver) that match your existing WI process.
- Forge-native architecture — apps built on Atlassian's Forge platform run inside Atlassian's own infrastructure, meaning no external data transfer. This matters for security-conscious migrations.

We built ApprovalFlow for Confluence to address these requirements. It's Forge-native, supports version-aware approvals with full audit history, and works on all Confluence Cloud plans. Free for ≤10 users with a 30-day free trial on all plans.

Happy to help if you'd like to discuss how to map your existing WI CG4001.3 process to a Cloud-native workflow.

*Disclosure: We are from Flowdence, the team behind ApprovalFlow for Confluence*

Reagards,

Flowdence Team