Now that Approvals are available in Jira projects outside of Jira Service Management, Jira's Slack integration should support the same approval experience that Atlassian Assist provides for JSM:

When a Jira work item requires approval, the approver should receive an interactive Slack notification and be able to Approve or Decline directly from Slack.

The experience should be equivalent to the existing JSM approval experience, including:

• Approval-required notification sent directly to the approver in Slack

• Work item key, summary, description, status, priority, reporter, and other relevant information

• Approve button

• Decline button

• Show details / Open in Jira option

• Synchronization of the approval state between Jira and Slack

Reference: Jira Demo: Approvals

Problem Definition

Historically, approvals were primarily associated with Jira Service Management. Therefore, having the richer approval experience available through Atlassian Assist for JSM made sense.

However, Jira now supports approval steps in Jira workflows outside of JSM.

This creates a functionality gap.

Many business processes managed in Jira are not service-management processes but still require formal approval. Examples include:

• Product and roadmap approvals

• Business and operational requests

• Finance approvals

• Marketing approvals

• Legal/compliance reviews

• Engineering decisions

• Release approvals

• Procurement requests

• Internal project approvals

• Cross-functional initiatives

These processes belong in Jira rather than JSM, but their approvers often do not work continuously inside Jira.

For many organizations, Slack is where those stakeholders spend most of their working day.

Current Experience

For JSM, Atlassian Assist can notify an approver in Slack and provide interactive Approve, Decline, and Show details actions.

For a regular Jira work item using Jira Approvals, there is currently no equivalent end-to-end Slack experience.

Administrators can partially work around the notification problem using Jira Automation and Slack integrations. For example:

Approval required → Automation → Slack notification → Link back to Jira

However, this solves only the notification portion.

Implementing an actual Approve / Decline action in Slack is significantly more complex.

A custom implementation requires customers to manage Slack interactive components, callbacks, user identity mapping, Jira APIs, authentication, approval state synchronization, error handling, and security validation.

Therefore, something that already exists as a native JSM capability becomes a custom integration project when the same approval is performed in Jira.

Business Impact

Approvers are frequently business stakeholders rather than daily Jira users.

Requiring them to:

Slack notification → Open Jira → Load work item → Review → Find approval → Approve/Decline

introduces unnecessary context switching and friction into what should be a simple decision.

For organizations running a large number of approval-based workflows, this can result in:

• Slower approval cycles

• Approvals being missed

• Users needing additional reminders

• Increased dependency on Jira notifications

• Context switching between Slack and Jira

• Custom integrations being developed to reproduce functionality Atlassian already provides in JSM

The approval itself may take only a few seconds. The experience surrounding it should therefore be equally lightweight.

Suggested Solution

Extend the existing Jira Cloud for Slack / Atlassian Slack approval capabilities to support Jira Approvals, not only JSM approvals.

When a Jira work item enters a status requiring approval, Slack should send the designated approver an interactive message similar to the existing JSM experience:

Approval required

PROJ-123 — Request title

Description / relevant work item information

Status: In Review
Priority: High
Reporter: User Name

[Approve] [Decline] [Show details]

Selecting Approve or Decline should execute the Jira approval as the Slack-connected Atlassian user.

The result should then synchronize in both directions:

Approval performed in Slack → Jira immediately reflects the decision

and

Approval performed in Jira → Slack message immediately reflects the completed decision

This is important to prevent an already-completed approval from continuing to appear actionable in Slack.

Expected Behavior

1. A Jira work item enters a workflow status containing an approval step.

1. Jira identifies the configured approver(s).

1. Jira Cloud for Slack sends each approver an interactive Slack notification.

1. The approver reviews the relevant information without leaving Slack.

1. The approver selects Approve or Decline.

1. Jira records:

• • Approver identity

• • Approval decision

• • Date/time

1. The Jira work item continues according to its configured approval/workflow logic.

1. The Slack message is updated to show that the approval has been completed.

1. If the approval is completed directly in Jira, the Slack message is updated accordingly.

Why This Should Be a Native Capability

This should not require customers to recreate approval infrastructure using Automation, Slack APIs, middleware, Forge applications, or custom REST integrations.

Atlassian already has the interaction model through Atlassian Assist + JSM + Slack.

Jira now has the approval model.

Jira Cloud for Slack already provides the communication channel.

Connecting these existing capabilities would provide a consistent approval experience across the Jira platform:

JSM Approval → Slack → Approve / Decline

Jira Approval → Slack → Approve / Decline

The user experience should not depend on whether the underlying work item belongs to a Service Management project or another Jira project.

Related Atlassian Requests

This request is related to existing Atlassian suggestions and issues around Slack approvals, including:

• API-212 — Add approval workflow to Slack integration

• JSWCLOUD-27635 / JRACLOUD-91890 — Options for "Approve" and "Reject" directly within Slack

• JSDCLOUD-12460 — Slack Assist approval "Show details" functionality

• JSDCLOUD-13370 — Synchronizing approval status between Jira and Slack

The key difference with this request is the expansion of the use case:

Bring the existing interactive Slack approval experience to the newer approval capability available in Jira projects outside of Jira Service Management.