If you’re on a team that has branch protections in place that require more than one pull request (PR) approval, GitHub’s default behavior can cause notifications to be dismissed prematurely. For instance, let’s say a team is assigned to review a pull request, and one team member provides their approval. In this scenario, GitHub dismisses notifications for other team members, assuming that the pull request no longer requires additional review. However, this can be problematic if branch protections mandate multiple approvals. An effective workaround is to have the latest PR reviewer reassign the team for additional review. Yet, this manual process is prone to oversight. So, how can we automate this process?

A solution to this dilemma lies in setting up GitHub’s auto assignment feature. By enabling auto assignment, whenever your team is requested to review a PR, the system automatically removes the team as a reviewer and designates a specified subset of team members in its place. You can include your entire team in this subset to ensure everyone receives notifications without the need for manual reassignment. For detailed guidance on configuring your team’s settings for this automation, refer to the documentation provided here.