PIM approval is not working

For Microsoft Entra PIM approvals, the supported behavior is:

1. Go to Microsoft Entra admin center > ID Governance > Privileged Identity Management > Approve requests.
2. Find the pending request.
3. Enter a justification.
4. Select Submit for Microsoft Entra roles, or Approve for Azure resource roles.

Relevant checks for the behavior described:

• Approvers can’t approve their own role activation requests. If the same account is both requester and approver, approval won’t complete as expected.
• Service principals can’t approve requests. Approval must be done by an eligible user approver.
• Approvals must be completed within 24 hours. If not approved in that window, the requester must submit a new request.
• Approval emails can be delayed. The first approval email is typically delivered within 3 to 10 minutes for 90% of cases, and for 1% of customers it can take up to 15 minutes. If one approver completes the approval in the portal before the first email is sent, other approvers might not receive the approval-request email.

If the portal shows the approval as successful but the request reappears, verify these first:

1. The approver account is not the same account that requested activation.
2. The approver is a user account, not a service principal.
3. The request is still within the 24-hour approval window.
4. Refresh Approve requests and confirm the current status there rather than relying on the email flow.

For Microsoft Entra role approvals, pending requests can also be checked with Microsoft Graph:

GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/roleManagement/directory/roleAssignmentScheduleRequests/filterByCurrentUser(on='approver')?$filter=status eq 'PendingApproval'

If the request still appears as pending there after an approval attempt, that confirms the approval did not persist.

References:

• Approve or deny requests for Microsoft Entra roles in Privileged Identity Management
• Approve or deny requests for Azure resource roles in Privileged Identity Management
• Email notifications in PIM
• PIM Approval request doesnt show up to approve.. But Email Does - Microsoft Q&A