Advanced Approval Templates for Jira: Streamlined Processes and Full Transparency

For years, Jira teams have improvised approval workflows using statuses, comments, checklists, or custom fields. As work becomes increasingly cross-functional - involving legal, finance, procurement, and external collaborators - approval steps have become more critical to governance, compliance, and operational clarity.

To address this growing demand, Atlassian has recently begun rolling out native approval features in Jira Cloud - a sign that they’re listening closely to customer needs and evolving Jira beyond simple task management into a structured decision-tracking system.

Native Jira Approvals - How Does It Work

Atlassian’s native approvals feature is now available for Company-Managed Projects in Premium and Enterprise plans. It enables admins to add formal approval steps directly into Jira workflows, eliminating the need for provisional processes.

With built-in approvals, teams can:

• Request sign-off from one or more Jira users

• Capture decisions before a workflow transition occurs

• View who approved and when via an audit log

• Report and search decision history through JQL

This functionality is ideal for straightforward approval flows, such as a manager approving a budget, QA confirming a defect fix, or a product owner reviewing a change request.

Native approvals bring clarity and structure to processes that previously relied on imagination rather than tooling, and that’s an important milestone for Jira Cloud users.

Approval Path for Jira: A Mature Solution Built for Complex Processes

While Atlassian’s native approval feature is a strong first step, Approval Path for Jira was built for organizations that need approvals to be configurable, automated, and accessible to internal and external stakeholders - without restructuring workflows or managing new permissions.

At the heart of Approval Path is the ability to create reusable approval definitions. Instead of configuring an approval each time, teams can trigger predefined workflows manually or automatically using Jira Automation. Each definition can include a rich mix of step types: individual users, groups, external email approvers (no Jira license required, so it’s a cost-effective solution ), vote-based decisions, automation steps, webhooks, or field-driven logic. Steps can run one after another or in parallel, and decisions aren’t limited to approve or reject - users can also abstain, give consent, or simply receive notifications depending on the context.

To prevent bottlenecks, Approval Path supports expiration timers, configurable reminder schedules, and delegation rules - ensuring approvals don’t stall when someone is unavailable. Notifications are customizable and can even allow reviewers to make decisions directly from email. Email delivery is flexible as well, with support for authenticated OAUTH Gmail/Outlook SMTP sending.

What may be especially important for compliance-driven teams: Approval Path already supports workflow validation, something users have requested from Atlassian’s native solution, but it isn’t yet available. Approvals can also be initiated and completed by JSM customers (if enabled), making it suitable for vendor or client-facing workflows.

All progress and related communication are captured in a single, structured approval record, including optional Jira comments, so nothing gets lost in long activity threads. Administrators can track every active and completed approval through a dedicated dashboard or use JQL to search work items linked to approvals. Additionally, the app provides a REST API to make managing approvals more flexible.

Approval Path works across all Jira plans and all project types with the same UI, and for organizations using Confluence, there’s a matching app that uses the same interface and logic, keeping the learning curve low and consistency high.

Whether it’s multi-layer financial approvals, legally required sign-offs, procurement workflows, security or compliance reviews, or anything requiring transparency and justification - Approval Path is built to scale with complexity while keeping the user experience simple.

Approval Path for Jira vs. Atlassian Native Approvals

Which One Fits Your Team?

Both solutions aim to make approvals in Jira easier, but they’re built with different scopes in mind.

Atlassian Native Approvals are a great starting point for teams who need simple, workflow-based sign-offs. They integrate smoothly with Jira’s native UI, allow users to be added during the approval process, and - for many teams - will cover a large portion of basic approval needs without installing any additional apps.

However, the feature is still evolving. Today, it lacks several advanced controls. Workflow validation support is currently requested but not available yet. For teams with structured compliance requirements, external stakeholders, or conditional routing, these gaps may become limiting.

On the other hand, Approval Path for Jira goes significantly further, offering reusable templates, advanced routing logic, workflow validation support, external approvals via email, configurable notifications, delegation, deadlines, direct decisions from email, webhook actions, and full automation. It’s designed for teams that manage repeatable approval processes, compliance rules, or multi-step sign-off chains across multiple environments and project types.

In short:

• If you need lightweight approvals built into the workflow and you’re already on Premium or Enterprise, the native feature may be sufficient.

• If your workflows involve multiple approver types, external participants, conditional routing, expiration rules, automation, or audit requirements, Approval Path remains the more flexible and powerful choice..

And as the native functionality continues evolving, so will Approval Path . We can’t tell you which one is the best, only which one fits your needs.

But of course… we do have our favorite. 😉