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Can't find any approver to select in the Approval field

Clara Magalhaes

I manage a Jira Service Desk (team-managed) space and, until Friday, my workflow for most of the Request Types was working perfectly.
I have a Approval status, where the Agent was supposed to choose the Approver of the ticket.

It was working fine until Friday, my agentes were able to select the user (either another agent, or a customer) to approve the solution.

This morning we woke up with the inability to select a person for approval. NOTHING changed in the settings, but now when I click on the field to open the dropdown to select the person to approve, the list is empty:

I can't see any agent OR Customer. Now all my In Review tickets are stuck because I can't transition them without approval.

Please notice, this was working fine until Friday! The settings seem to be correct:

Configure-Workflow-Website-Service-Desk-Manage-Workflow-Jira-01-12-2026_09_55_AM.png

While investigating the issue, I discovered that the Approvals field is LOCKED in my space, and that I can't change it:

Website-Service-Desk-Fields-Service-space-Jira-01-12-2026_10_43_AM.png
I have already contacted the it support from my company to check if there is anything they can help with.

Any clues?

Accepted answers

All comments

Marc -Devoteam-

Hi @Clara Magalhaes

What if you start typing the name of a user?

What is the source of the field that you where using?

Or check with your Jira admin if changes have been made on the instance?

This is a public forum and we can't access your instance.

Clara Magalhaes

Hey @Marc -Devoteam- , thank you for your suggestion.
When I start typing, the list is empty. If you check the image I pasted above, I actually started typing MY OWN NAME (that usually worked), but nothing shows up.

I was investigating, though, and I found that the "Approvals" field is LOCKED for my Service Desk. I am also contacting my company administrator and support to check if they changed anything.

I would be very surprised if they would be able to LOCK a field in a team-managed space (and me, as the administrator of the space, can't do anything about it). The whole purpose of team-managed is for teams to be able to manage their own workflow.

Marc -Devoteam-

Hi @Clara Magalhaes

Field Approvals is always LOCKED. This field shows given or declined approvals.

I checked my instance on a JSM Team managed project and If I start typing names, I can select users or customers as approver.

What if you try a random name?

Clara Magalhaes

Hi @Marc -Devoteam- whatever I type, nothing shows up. The list is empty.

Kerli Suve

Can you choose people on some other field that has type "People"? You can ask your Jira administrator that if they have changed anything in the global permissions "Browse users and groups".

Victor Torres_30bpvw

I usually set my approval users/groups by workflow.

In your workflow editor, update a transition that comes before the approval status:

Add a rule to the transition
Select Update an issue field
Select "Approvers" or "Approver groups" depending on your business needs. If you don't have those fields, create them as user picker and group picker in Custom Fields. Add them to your Screen if you want your users to select the approvers.
Make sure you're selecting "Approvers" or "Approver groups" in your Approval section in the workflow.

This will make this step transparent as users go through the workflow.

You don't need a native Jira field for this. Just make sure your workflow is using a user or group field. The Approval section in the workflow will look for a populated field with users or groups. You need to set them beforehand.

If you want users to pick the approvers themselves, you need to add the created custom fields to your Screen.

Let me know if that works for you.

Clara Magalhaes

That didn't work. What I did for now it to actually change the setting. All Approvals are automatically set to be approved by a predefined person (for the moment, that would be me, the manager). Then the agent must CHANGE the person to the one who is actually approving. This is working. A workaround.

Clara Magalhaes

Hi @Kerli Suve , the other fields for selecting people arw working fine.

I already contacted my Jira Admin (I do have the role, but I can't change anything because we have other spaces that are part to the company-managed service desks). They are investigating.

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