Troubleshooting

This page lists common symptoms admins hit, paired with the page that explains the underlying behavior. Most apparent bugs in Aura Workflows are deliberate design choices documented elsewhere — start here, then follow the link.

Approvals

A user I added to a reviewer group can’t approve, or someone I removed still seems able to. Reviewer groups aren’t snapshotted; membership is checked when somebody clicks Approve or Reject, so changes apply live to every pending approval. For a fixed reviewer set, name users directly. See Approvals.

An approval resolved without anyone clicking anything. Removing a reviewer can push the remaining approvals over the threshold, and under Require all reviewers approval removing the last outstanding reviewer leaves no one to wait on. Either way the workflow transitions on the removal. See the on-the-fly reviewers section of Approvals.

I edited the reviewer list in the builder but pending approvals still show the old reviewers. The preassigned reviewer list is resolved and frozen on the instance the moment the page enters the approval state. To reshape an active approval, transition the page out and back in, or reset the workflow. See “Editing a workflow mid-approval” in Approvals.

I changed a variable and the existing approval still has the old reviewers. Variables in reviewer lists are read once when the page enters the approval state and snapshotted onto the instance. Later changes take effect only after the page leaves and re-enters the state. The same rule covers expiration dates and durations. See Variables and metadata fields.

Applying workflows

Pages I bulk-applied lost their previous workflow’s pending approvals. Bulk apply replaces any existing instance: the old one is deleted, pending approvals dropped, history reset. The modal warns about pages that already have a workflow but offers no merge or skip-if-exists option. See the bulk apply section of Applying workflows.

I added a label to a page that already had a workflow and nothing happened. Auto-apply by label is one-shot per page and silently skips pages that already carry a workflow. Remove the existing workflow first, or use bulk apply. See Applying workflows.

I added an auto-apply rule but pages already in the space didn’t get the workflow. Auto-apply fires only on page creation and label-add events; it never backfills. For an initial rollout, run a bulk apply once and let auto-apply handle new pages. See Applying workflows.

Emails

Variables in my email subject or body aren’t being substituted. Subject and body fields have no placeholder syntax — @page_owner and similar tokens are sent verbatim. The page title and link come from the template wrapper, so don’t embed them yourself. See Email Notifications.

Some users are getting two emails for the same event. Free-form addresses in Assigned recipients are de-duplicated separately from account-based recipients, so a person listed once as a Confluence user and once as a typed address receives two copies. Pick one form per recipient. See Email Notifications.

A page shows the Aura app as the last editor instead of a real person, and emails to the Last editor role go to the app. Some actions — notably Modify title and Publish page — edit the page while running, making the app the most recent author until a human edits next. The interaction with the Last editor role is covered in Email Notifications.

Expiration

A fixed-date expiration with a date in the past never fired. A date already passed when the page enters the state isn’t scheduled at all; the deadline is left unset and the page sits in the state indefinitely. Turn on Repeats annually to roll the day forward. See Expiration and Page Freshness.

Expirations don’t fire at the exact time I configured. Aura scans for due expirations hourly rather than scheduling each individually. A “1 day” duration set at 14:23 fires at the next hourly tick after 14:23 the following day. The same cadence governs approval and expiration reminders. See Expiration and Page Freshness.

My duration-based expiration restarted when I expected it to stay put. The clock starts when the page enters the state, and leaving and re-entering restarts it from zero. There’s no “remember the original deadline” mode. See Expiration and Page Freshness.

Removing a workflow

I removed a workflow but the restrictions, labels, or title changes it made are still on the page. Removing a workflow deletes the instance and its pending notifications, but doesn’t roll back side effects from actions that already ran. Undo restrictions or labels through Confluence directly, or transition through a state whose actions undo them before removing the workflow. See Applying workflows.

Still stuck?

If your symptom isn’t on this list, or following the link didn’t get you to a fix, our support desk is the next stop. Send us the page URL, the workflow name, and a short description of what you observed versus what you expected.

Support desk