Approval Step - Need 1 approval of many

[Gabe Belknap]

HI everyone. I need some help please.

I have built a workflow with an approval step, where I only need 1 of 6 people to approve for the workflow to move to the next step. Unfortunately I am not using JSM, so I am not able to determine how many approvals are required.

I have done some reading and even tried some automation, however I cannot get past the multiple approvals needed when I only require 1. I looked at creating a group, however I don't have admin on the shared platform.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

[Florian Bauer]

Hi @Gabe Belknap ,

Jira doesn’t support “1 of N” approvals natively — if you assign multiple approvers, Jira will always wait for all of them to approve because a Jira workflow is seriell by nature.

In BPMN, this pattern is handled much more elegantly: you model several parallel User Tasks (one per approver) followed by an event-based gateway that continues the process as soon as any one approver responds. The remaining open approval tasks are then automatically closed:

If you ever consider solving this via BPMN inside Jira, Flower BPM for Jira supports this pattern out of the box. But that of course depends on whether using an app is an option for your site.

Cheers,
Florian

[Teodora V _Warsaw Dynamics_]

Hi @Gabe Belknap 

Unfortunately, you cannot fully achieve this with native Jira Software workflows. You can mimic it, but not achieve a proper “1 of 6 approvals” without JSM or an app.

(Maybe John would have a better idea)

A possible "native" workaround is to let all 6 users execute the transition, but Jira will not track it as an approval, and can’t stop multiple people from doing it.

To have proper 1-of-6 approval logic, you would need either:

• Jira Service Management (built-in approvals), or

• A marketplace app that adds approval functionality, like Approval Path for Jira, Business Process Manager, or Easy Approval.

[John Funk]

Hi Gabe,

Can you share a screenshot of the approval step you have set up? 

[Gabe Belknap]

Hi John, thanks for connecting.  Please see the attached.  From the testing I have done, both are required to approve before the Status changes.

Appreciate any help.

[John Funk]

What type of project is this? Team-managed? Company-managed? Software? Business? 

[Gabe Belknap]

Hi John, good morning. It is a Team-managed project within Business Space.

[John Funk]

This is probably the most limited type of project you could select. You should consider using a JSM project for your intake as you will not be able to achieve with the one you have most likely. 

[Gabe Belknap]

Unfortunately that is not an option for me.

Is there a way that I can have one approver listed, and have them forward the approval to another approver without giving them Member access to my Project?

Thanks

[John Funk]

First, why is that not an option? 

Second, no a user cannot do an approval with access to the project that I am aware of. 

[Gabe Belknap]

It would not be easy to move to another project as we have been running this one for 3 years and porting everything to another one is not likely something I can sell. :)

Thanks for the help

[John Funk]

You wouldn't need to port to it per se. It would just be the new front end where requests are entered and then cloned into your existing project for the work to continue as it does now.