Approve PR button disappears after PR gets merged
Asked by moises_cobrowser:

I've recently noticed that it's not possible anymore to APPROVE an already merged PR.

Why is that happening?

Previously it was possible to provide feedback even once the PR was merged.

For us, sometimes we merge some PRs and feedback reviews are happening after, for instance, when we're in a hurry for a hotfix and we do need to deploy that hotfix quickly into production, however reviewers are doing the reviews after to be sure the new code is correct.

Is there any possibility to be able to get back the big green Approve button even for already merged PRs?

I reviewed all the config at repo level and project level and I could not find any option for that.

Thanks in advance.


Answers:
author: Patrik S
body: Hello [@moises_cobrowser](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/419056) ,

I see you have also opened a support ticket with us. Just sharing here as well that we have created a feature request to allow Pull Requests to be approved after they were merged, which can be accessed with the link below :

* <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BCLOUD-22396>

For users who are interested in that feature, we suggest adding your vote there, since this helps both developers and product managers to understand the interest. Also, make sure to add yourself as a watcher in case you want to receive first-hand updates from that ticket. Please note that all features are implemented with [this policy](https://confluence.atlassian.com/support/implementation-of-new-features-policy-201294576.html) in mind.

Thank you, [@moises_cobrowser](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/419056) !

Patrik S

comments: author: Ryan Geddings
body: Patrik, one thing that wasn't addressed was the fact that many of us previously saw this functionality working, I hadn't seen anything about why it was pulled out, and now it's being turned into a feature request. So my understanding of this would be that the engineering team corrected what they felt was a bug and the strategy team is looking at future work to make this a feature?


author: Trace
body: I agree the approve-after-merge feature is highly used in our organization. This will probably be the final nail for us since private repos are common elsewhere as well. Hope the approve button can be readded quickly.

For now we're using comments for approvals but this will not last too long.


author: Mahesh Shinde
body: Hi [@moises_cobrowser](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/419056) :

I think as per your suggestion, it won't be useful to add approve button for already merged PRs. This is the way code flow is going on in Bitbucket repository, if you can add merge check policy like **Check for at least number of approvals for every PRs : <https://support.atlassian.com/bitbucket-cloud/docs/suggest-or-require-checks-before-a-merge/>**

Then it will not merge those PRS before getting any approvals.

OR

If you want this request then please contact with Atlassian Support Team

Link: <https://support.atlassian.com/>

Regards,

Mahesh Shinde

comments: author: moises_cobrowser
body: Hi Mahesh,

\> I think as per your suggestion, it won't be useful to add approve button for already merged PRs.

I already explained one of the reasons of providing feedback after the PR is merged.

We already have in place checks before PR approval, but we can't enforce them.

Imagine we're in a hurry for merging something that needs to fix something urgently on production, only one developer on support duty call, then we need to wait till the next day to have one approval to be able to deploy a hotfix to production.

That's not ok, not at all.

However since we're a big team and we have multiple reviewers involved, the Approve button has been really helping us during the PR review process even if the PR was already merged to know that all involved people gave their approval.

Now that's no longer possible, and makes no sense to me the change you have introduced.


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