Moving issues on someone else's Kanban board and it gets auto-assigned to me - why?

[Ashley Wehmeyer]

Hello,

I'm trying to teach my project engineers how to transition tasks across their personal Kanban boards. When I move their issues it drops from their board and gets auto-assigned to me even though I wasn't the original "assignee". I then have to go to my board and re-assign back to them after each scrum session. This is very annoying! How can I move their issues without having it auto-assign to me?

~AW

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Ashley Wehmeyer -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Please check if you have an automation rule which is assigning the issue, based upon who transitioned it on the board.  You can confirm this by looking at the issue history or at the automation audit log.

To stop this behavior, try disabling the rule.

However...it is likely this rule was created for a purpose.  Please check with the rule author to understand that reason and the impact of disabling the rule.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Ashley Wehmeyer]

Where can I find the automation rule as well as the automation audit log?

[Bill Sheboy]

You can find these if you are a project admin:

• looking at your board, find the lightning bolt icon near the top, right side of the page
• select that icon, and then audit log
• or...select manage automations

If you look in the log, you may find recently executed rules to check.

[Ashley Wehmeyer]

It looks like I may not be a project admin because I'm not seeing the lightning bolt icon you're referencing. It's weird because when I clock on the gear icon it says "Jira Administration" with "Projects" as an option. When I clicked on "Projects" it showed me all the projects I'm on but that I'm not "Project Lead". Maybe that's why? In any case, it doesn't look like I may have the power to change the auto-reassign feature. :-(

[Trudy Claspill]

Can you see a section for Automations that says Rule Executions?

If you expand that section and click the Refresh option within it you might see a list of the rules that executed against the issue. I say "might" because I am an admin of my own Jira system so I am not sure if non-admins see the information.

[Ashley Wehmeyer]

Unfortunately the Automation feature doesn't show up on my UI other than under the "Structure" tab and I know that's not the same. This leads me to believe I don't have it and that I'm not a Project Admin. To be honest I'm not sure if it being cloud-based versus on-prem makes a difference but I guessed that Jira was cloud for my client's company (I'm on a VDI). However, I'm not 100% certain so depending on cloud vs. network I wasn't sure if the features are in different locations on the UI?

[Trudy Claspill]

Features do differ between Cloud and on-premise.

If you are accessing a Jira Cloud site you would use a URL like https://<something>.atlassian.net

Another clue is in the menu bar. In on-premise instances you will see an option for Boards in the menu bar. That option does not appear in the menu bar in Jira Cloud.

A question that we did not ask is exactly how are you "moving" issues from one board to another? Issues are actually contained in Projects. Boards are just a way to visualize and manipulate the issues. Issues display in Boards based on a filter used by the board. The Filter selects which issues to display, and that selection can be based on a wide variety of criteria.

So, you don't really move issues between boards. You make some change to the issue which causes it to match or no longer match the filter of a board.

What change are you making to these issues that coincides with them no longer displaying on the engineers board? Are you moving the issue to another column on the board (changing the issue status)? If so, then the change of Assignee may be part of the workflow - whomever changes the status of the issue becomes the current assignee for the issue. If this was implemented in the workflow only a Jira Administrator will be able to change it. 

[Ashley Wehmeyer]

It looks like the Jira is on-premises because I do have "Boards" as a drop-down option on the menu that's located on the top ribbon of the page. There's Dashboards, Projects, Issues, Boards, Structure, Plans, Bauer, eazyBI, OKR Board, and Create. Then a search bar on the upper right-hand corner near the question mark icon, gear icon, and user/me icon. 

I am using the Jira personal Kanban boards that my team created and moving other assignee's issues from status to status within their board. When that happens it changes from them as the assignee to me. I would like to turn off that automation but unfortunately I don't think I have that as an option since I'm not a Project Admin.

[Trudy Claspill]

Do the issues in these various boards all come from one project, or do they come from different project? Do the issue keys (i.e. ABC-123) all have the same prefix (ABC) or different prefixes?

It is possible that the Jira Administrators did not even grant permission to Project Admins to manage automation rules, so it is possible that even the Project Admin(s) for these project(s) may not be able to turn off the rule(s).

Or this may be a single rule applied to multiple projects. A multiple project rule can be managed only by a full Jira Administrator.

It looks like the on-premise Automation functionality doesn't present a Rules Execution option in the issue view, like Cloud does. So you can't look there to find out if an Automation Rule did this.

You can look at the Activity tab for the issue and find the record for where you changed the Status and the Assignee got changed to you. If it was done by an Automation Rule then that record will show who changed the Assignee to you. That person will probably have access to modify or disable the Automation Rule.

If it shows that you changed the Assignee to you, then the change is probably be handled by a workflow Post Function instead. Changing the workflow would require help from a full Jira Administrator.