Form with approver input field, overwrites added approvers when form is editted

[Gerben Heinen]

I need some ideas to fix this: we have a form that should be approved by a manager. The user fills in the form, selects his\her manager and submits the form. The form 's input field is linked to the work item's approvers field. 

Then automation automatically adds our financial managers as an approver to the work item's approver field, so now there are two approvers.

But when the form is editted and saved again, it overwrites the approvers to one approver only. Now when that approver already approved, the issue is transition automatically without our financial manager having approved the work item.

How can I fix this issue , so that the form doesnt overwrite the existing approvers?

Thanks.

[John Funk]

Hi Gerben,

The quick answer would be to not allow the form to be updated once submitted. The user can add comments and the Approvers should not the comments before Approving or Denying. 

[Gerben Heinen]

Hi John, the form got opened by an agent and he made the changes. I don't think I can prevent an agent from editting the form, can I?

[John Funk]

Yes, you should be able to. Edit the form and go to Settings. 

Then under preferences, select the appropriate values. 

[Christopher Yen]

Hi @Gerben Heinen 

I think there are two parts to look at,

1. When an automation adds an approver you can reference the field value itself as a smart value + the new value so it appends it instead of replacing. so it would be approver smart value + additional/new approver

2. If it doesn't negatively affect other approvals sharing the same workflow I would update the approval step in your workflow to require "Everyone" as the value for Number of Approvers in order to transition to your approved status (if not already set as Everyone) This will prevent the work item from transitioning to approved when there is still an approval pending. 

Another option could be making it a sequential approval, after the manager approves then it goes to a new pending financial manager approval step separating the two approvals

[Gerben Heinen]

Hi Christopher, thanks, but both things are already done. The point is that an editted form overwrites the approvers field. I gave it some thought and perhaps i need link the approvers field in the form to another jira field, copy the approver in that jira field to the approver field that is used by jira. In that way when the form is editted, it doesn't change the approvers any more when I can let the automation only trigger on a new created form. Will experiment a bit more.

[Gerben Heinen]

I eventually made the changes as I described above: so the form is linked to another work item field, and that is copied by automation to the approver field only when the issues is created.

Thanks all for your input!