# Square bracket on approval notification

### **Introduction**

This release focuses on improving the reliability and consistency of **approval automation notifications**. The focus is on improving how user and group mentions are handled inside automated messages configured under **Automations on approval**, **Automations on rejection**, and **Automations on cancellation**.

With these improvements, admins can expect notification messages to render accurately, without formatting artefacts, and with better validation of supported characters.

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### **What this release covers**

This release addresses issues observed when admins configured a “Send a message” automation and tagged a user group whose name included parentheses:

* Messages occasionally displayed random closing square brackets (`]]]]`), even when not present in the original configuration.
* These formatting errors appeared both in the automation builder and in the final delivered message.

Enhancements implemented include:

* Updated formatting logic to ensure tags/mentions are rendered cleanly and consistently.
* Strengthened validation, preventing admins from entering unsupported characters (`[` or `]`) in user and group names.
* More reliable translation between the UI mention format and the server-side format used for notification delivery.

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### **Before vs After**

| **Scenario**                                                                    | **Before**                                                   | **After**                                                       |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Tagging a group with parentheses in its name inside “Send a message” automation | Random trailing brackets (`]]]]`) appeared in notifications. | Mentions render correctly with no unwanted characters.          |
| Mention formatting between UI and server                                        | Inconsistent formatting caused artefacts in final messages.  | Formatting is now aligned, stable, and error-free.              |
| Entering unsupported characters in user/group names                             | Allowed in certain cases, resulting in broken formatting.    | `[` and `]` are now blocked with an immediate validation error. |
| Notification preview vs actual message                                          | Could differ due to rendering bugs.                          | Both now display the same, accurate output.                     |

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