Two minutes of context
Before you start
Jira Service Management sends each approver one approval email — ever. If nobody answers, nothing else happens. Approval Nudge runs an hourly scan over your JSM projects, finds requests stuck in Waiting for approval, reminds exactly the approvers who haven't answered, optionally re-sends Jira's own approval email, and escalates to a person you choose when nothing moves.
- You need Jira admin rights to install, and project admin rights to configure each project.
- The app works in both company-managed and team-managed JSM projects.
- Approvals must come from workflow approval steps (the standard JSM approval feature).
- Nothing is enabled by default: after install, the app does nothing until you switch it on per project.
Jira admin
Install the app
Install from the Atlassian Marketplace listing, or in Jira go to Apps → Explore more apps and search for “Approval Nudge”. The app is built on Atlassian Forge and carries the Runs on Atlassian designation: all processing and storage stay inside Atlassian's infrastructure — there is no Quietmill server involved, ever.
Project admin
Enable it for a project
Open Project settings → Apps → Approval Nudge and switch on Enable Approval Nudge for this project. Each project has its own independent configuration — cadence, templates and escalation contacts can differ between, say, IT requests and facilities.
The four numbers
Reminder cadence and escalation
| Setting | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Days pending before the first reminder | 0–60 | How long a request may sit in Waiting for approval before the first nudge. 0 means the next hourly scan after it stalls. |
| Days between repeat reminders | 1–60 | Spacing of follow-up reminders while the approval stays pending. |
| Maximum reminders per request | 1–20 | Hard stop so nobody is nagged forever. |
| Escalate after this many days pending | 0–90 | When to alert your escalation contacts. 0 = never escalate. |
Escalation is independent of reminders: it fires based on how long the approval has been pending, mentions your chosen escalation contacts in a comment, and reports how many reminders were already sent.
Your words, not ours
Custom templates
Both the reminder comment and the escalation comment accept templates. Leave a field blank to use the default message. Variables are replaced when the comment is posted; approver and contact variables become real @mentions, so people are actually notified.
| Variable | Available in | Becomes |
|---|---|---|
{{approvers}} | Reminder (required) | @mentions of the approvers still pending — only them |
{{contacts}} | Escalation (required) | @mentions of the escalation contacts |
{{days}} | Both | How long the request has waited, e.g. “3 days” |
{{number}} / {{max}} | Reminder | This reminder's number and the configured maximum |
{{reminders}} | Escalation | How many reminders were sent, e.g. “2 reminders” |
{{issueKey}} | Both | The request key, e.g. ITSM-123 |
The buttons people actually click
Re-sending Jira's native approval email
Jira's approval email — the one with working one-click Approve / Decline buttons — is sent once and never again. With Resend Jira's approval email enabled, Approval Nudge re-delivers that exact email to approvers who haven't answered, using the same remove-and-re-add mechanic Atlassian documents as the manual workaround.
Because this briefly touches the approver list, the app is deliberately careful: every step is verified, anything unexpected triggers an automatic rollback, and resending stops for good the moment anyone approves or declines. After that, only comment reminders and escalation continue for whoever is still pending.
Prove it in one minute
Verify with “Run scan now”
The scan runs automatically every hour. To see it work immediately: create a test request that requires approval, wait for it to reach Waiting for approval, then press Run scan now in the project settings. With a 0-day first-reminder threshold you'll see the reminder comment appear on the test request within a minute or two. “Run scan now” obeys the same rules as the hourly scan — it will never double-send reminders that aren't due.
Every stuck approval, one screen
The Approvals Overview
Under Apps → Approvals Overview in Jira's main navigation, you get a live table of every request stuck in approval across all projects you administer: how many days each has waited, exactly which approvers are still pending, when the last reminder went out, and a Nudge now button for when waiting for the next scan isn't an option.
The Overview lists projects where you are a project admin. If it looks empty, that's the first thing to check.
The silent killer
Deactivated approvers
When an approver's Atlassian account is deactivated — they left the company, usually — their approval can never be answered, and nothing in Jira tells you. Approval Nudge checks approver account status during every scan:
- Deactivated approvers are never reminded — no comments @mentioning ghosts.
- If all pending approvers are deactivated, the reminder is skipped entirely and the situation is escalated to your escalation contacts with a clear note.
- The request panel and the Approvals Overview both flag deactivated approvers visibly.
- If account status can't be determined, the app assumes the approver is active — it fails toward reminding a human, never toward silence.
Receipts
Outcome history
Approvals are governance, so the app keeps receipts: for each nudged request it records who approved, who declined and who never answered — per approval cycle, so the history survives workflows that loop back through Waiting for approval and reset Jira's own approval field. This history powers the panel and Overview today and approval analytics in upcoming releases.
Honest maths
Free tier and billing
Approval Nudge is free for sites with up to 10 Jira Service Management agents. Larger sites pay US$0.75 per agent per month after a 30-day free trial, billed by Atlassian alongside your existing Jira subscription — there's no separate Quietmill invoice. One honest wrinkle worth knowing: Atlassian bills Marketplace apps by your site's total JSM agent count, not by how many agents use approvals.
Narrow by design
Data and permissions
The app requests five scopes: read and write Jira work items (to read approvals and post reminder comments), read user profiles (to resolve approver names and account status), read service-desk requests (to read approval data), and app storage (its own configuration and history). It stores configuration, reminder history and approval-outcome records containing Atlassian account IDs — no names, no emails, no request content. Full detail on the privacy page and in the Marketplace listing's privacy tab.
Clean exit
Uninstall
Uninstall from Apps → Manage apps like any Marketplace app. Reminders stop immediately. App storage — configuration and history — is removed by Atlassian under the standard Forge app-removal policy. The app never wrote to your workflows, fields or permission schemes, so there is nothing to clean up.
When something looks off
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Check |
|---|---|
| No reminders appear | Is the project toggle enabled? Is the request actually in Waiting for approval with pending approvers? Has the first-reminder threshold elapsed? The scan runs hourly — or use Run scan now. |
| Reminder uses the default text | A blank template field means “use the default”. Custom reminder templates must include {{approvers}}; escalation templates must include {{contacts}}. |
| No escalation happens | Escalate-after-days set to 0 means never. Check escalation contacts are set and the pending time has actually crossed the threshold. |
| Approvals Overview is empty | It shows projects you administer. Check your project-admin permission and the minimum-days filter. |
| Approval email wasn't re-sent | Resend stops permanently once any approver has answered, and is skipped for deactivated approvers. Check the request's activity for the resend audit trail. |
Still stuck? Email [email protected] with the request key and the approximate time — never send exports of customer data. We answer within one UK business day.
Guide last reviewed 24 July 2026 for Approval Nudge 3.7.