Last updated: 28 August 2026
Page Approval answers one question honestly: was this page approved, and is what I am reading right now the thing that was approved? Everything below exists to keep that answer true. This page covers every screen, what each label means, and — at the end — what the app deliberately does not do.
The one idea worth reading first. An approval belongs to a version of a page, never to the page. So when someone edits an approved page, the app does not keep saying "Approved". It says "Approved on version 7 — the page is now on version 9, with 2 changes since then", and it gives you the link to see what changed. That is the whole product.
Install the app and it works. Anyone who can edit a page can send it for approval and choose who should sign it off, right there on the page. Space defaults exist (section 4) but they are optional: they only save people from repeating themselves.
Every page gains a small Approval item on the byline, next to the author. It shows one short label, without anyone clicking anything:
| Label | What it means |
|---|---|
| Not submitted | Nobody has asked for approval on this page. |
| Waiting for approval · 1 of 3 | A request is open and one of three approvers has signed off. |
| Approved | Approved, and the page is still on the version that was approved. |
| Approved · page changed | Approved once, but the text has moved on since. This is the state no other app in this category shows. |
| Changes requested | Somebody returned it with a written reason. |
Clicking the badge opens a small panel with three things and nothing else:
Opened from the badge with Review. One window, four blocks, no tabs.
The page title and the version the request was opened on. If the page moved after it was sent, an amber banner says so and offers See what changed. Nobody approves in the dark.
One line per person or group, with the face and the name:
A group counts as one line. Anyone who can edit the page can add or remove an approver here, and signatures already given are never wiped — a person added later simply starts as "waiting". App and bot accounts are refused as approvers: Atlassian's picker offers them, but a page waiting on a robot would wait forever, so the app says which account it refused and why.
Two buttons. Approve records your signature against the version you are looking at. Request changes opens a text box and the reason is required — the button stays off without one, and the server refuses it too.
The Approve button disappears when there is nothing left for you to sign, so the same version cannot be signed twice. This matters: a log that counts clicks instead of decisions is not evidence.
The written reason is stored and colleagues read it. Treat it like a page comment: say what needs changing, and do not put personal or sensitive information in it.
Collapsed at the bottom: one line per decision, newest first —
v7 · approved · Ana Silva · 26 Aug 2026, 14:12 — and each line opens that version. The
history never disappears, not when a signature goes stale and not when a subscription lapses.
In a space, open Space settings → Page approval. The screen opens by saying so itself: approvals already work in this space, and these settings only set the defaults. Four questions:
A half-finished setting — choosing "every page with a label" and leaving the label empty, for example — is refused with a message that says what to do.
In a space, open Page approvals. One row per page, with the state recalculated against today's version, who still has to sign, the last decision, and the links to open the page, open the approved version, see what changed, or take a decision.
Five numbers sit at the top: how many pages the report covers, how many are approved, how many are approved but changed since, how many are waiting, and how many were returned with changes requested.
The filter nobody else has: only pages that changed after approval. That is the list of pages that currently claim to be approved and are not telling the truth. If you are preparing for an audit, start there.
Other filters: state, approver and label. Export CSV gives you the same rows as a spreadsheet, with names written out rather than account codes.
When the report cannot read everything, it says so. The app reads the space page by page to the end. If some pages could not be read, a line at the top states plainly that the totals are short and invites you to try again — it never quietly shows a smaller number as if it were the whole picture.
Apps → Approvals in the Confluence top navigation. Three tabs, each with its count in the title:
Review opens the page, on purpose. Signing happens on the document itself, in the badge. This app will not let anyone rubber-stamp a queue of approvals without opening what they are approving.
Insert the optional Approval stamp macro at the top of a controlled document. It draws a box showing which version was approved, by whom and when — and that box comes out in the PDF when the page is exported, with the date the PDF was produced.
If the page has moved on since it was approved, the printed box says so in bold: "This page is now on version 2, with 1 change since it was approved. What you are reading has NOT been approved." A printed copy of a controlled document that cannot tell you it is out of date is worse than no copy at all.
The macro is optional. The badge on the byline works on every page without it.
Two things to know about Confluence's PDF export, neither of them ours: it can sit at "0% complete" for a few minutes before finishing all at once, and the file arrives through a progress page with a download link rather than downloading straight away.
| What happened | Does the approval still stand? |
|---|---|
| Someone published a new version of the page | It is flagged — the state becomes "Approved · page changed", with the count of changes and the link to see them. |
| A label was added or removed | Yes. Confluence does not change the page version for a label, and neither do we. |
| The page was renamed or moved | Yes. |
| An approver was added or removed | Yes — existing signatures are kept. A new approver simply starts as "waiting". |
| The space defaults were changed | Yes. Nothing already signed is reset. |
This table exists because the most common complaint about apps in this category is the opposite behaviour: an approval quietly wiped by a change that had nothing to do with the text.
Email support@saoirsesoftware.com, or open a request on our support portal. English, business days, and we aim to reply within two business days. Emails reach the person who writes the code.