Approval status stuck in 'Submitting Approval'
Platform Notice: Cloud - This article applies to Atlassian products on the cloud platform.
Sometimes, you might be stuck between transitions where an approval step determines the next transition. You see the message 'Submitting Approval' along with the throbber on the issue view page. This approval is stuck in 'Submitting Approval,' agents can't transition this ticket further.
This issue is observed when a user from an Approver group is removed when there are pending approvals waiting for their action.
When does it occur?
There are specific criteria upon which this issue occurs.
- Kindly check if your workflow has the following configuration.
- Approval step is configured with an Approver source as a 'Group Pickers' field (custom field type - Group Picker (multiple groups)).
- The number of approvers is set as Everyone. When an approval is triggered, this is ideally how it will be displayed on an issue before anyone approves.
- Approval step is configured with an Approver source as a 'Group Pickers' field (custom field type - Group Picker (multiple groups)).
How to troubleshoot?
- Check if any member(s) of the group selected already approved the request under the issue activity - Approvals.
- Note the time stamp of the Approval.
Go to https://admin.atlassian.com/ > Security > Audit Log (under Monitoring).
Only Organisation Admins can access the security page. Make sure you have the proper access before the next step. For more information, refer What are the different types of admin roles?
- Filter based on Activities: Removed User from group (under User Management).
- Are users removed from the group added to the Approval? If yes, check the timestamp.
- If the timestamp of the user removal is after the timestamp from step 2, then the user was removed when there was pending approval for them.
- If there are multiple occurrences for this, note the number of users removed from the group.
Solution
To fix this, we will add the same number of users removed from the group.
Please make sure that no approvals have been approved while performing this action, as it might reproduce this for another issue/ticket.
- Add the same number of temporary users removed (different users can be added).
- Ask these users to approve/decline the request. It will take some time for the changes to reflect. Refresh the issue view page to Approve/decline the request.
- Once approved/declined, the issue will transition to the next status based on the workflow.
- Double-check for any pending approvals before removing the temporary users from the group.
If you are not willing to add members to the group, another way to fix this is to add a transition from the Approval status to the next/previous status (based on your process requirement).