New Workflow editor errors

[Mahanth Prudhvi P]

In the new Workflow editor I see a few errors  saying "You can’t save this workflow until the following errors are resolved. Duplicated transition names" and it is highlighting few transitions with the same name.

Scenario:

I have a status "Resolved" and it has 3 incoming transitions with the same name "Resolved". All these 3 are highlighted as errors, one of the 3 is Universal or Global transition.

I also have another status "Closed" and it has 4 incoming transitions with the same name but they are not highlighted as errors. 

Because of these errors it is not letting me to make any changes unless I resolve those error transitions first. As a work around I am going to old workflow editor and making necessary updates.

I am not able to get it why I am getting only few transitions as errors whereas there are few more transitions with duplicate names.

Thanks!

Mahanth.

[John Funk]

Hi Mahanth,

It is because of the Any transition to a status. Those typically have a transition name as the same as the Status name. So you either need to rename that one (those if multiple) or you have have to name the other transitions to that status something different. 

[John Elder]

John, this is not making sense to me.  I am seeing the same errors in the new workflow editor, but when I switch to the old editor it allows me to edit and save my workflows just fine.  Why can't multiple transitions share the same transition name?  That seemed to be totally okay in the old editor, but it is now being enforced?  Seems like something we should spread some word out about before they make the hard switchover to the new editor only and people can't edit and save their workflows.

[John Funk]

It is very confusing to the system (and third party apps and automation) to have multiple transitions with the same names. That's one of the bad things in my opinion about the old editor (though there were/are very few bad things with it). Not sure that the new Editor will enforce the rule for existing transitions, but just for new transitions being created. I really don't think it's going to be that troublesome. 

Plus if you are on a work item and click the drop down for changing the status and there are two transitions to Done with the exact same name but your workflow does different things based on the transition, how would you know which one to use? 

[John Elder]

I understand what you are saying and I definitely agree with you in that context.  I would hope that good-practice workflow design would be not to have multiple transitions of the same name for the same issue in Jira. 

However... playing devil's advocate here... imagine a workflow where you have an "approved" transition, with one transition being for a user story and another transition being for a bug.  Two separate transitions of the same name, but with perhaps two different criteria for the transition... so would one be called "approved" and one be called "approved 2" or something like that?  I would love to solve this, if I could better understand it, especially since I understand your explanation for sure.

And thank you.  :)

[John Funk]

Approve the Bug or Approve the Story   :-)

It's just a name/label to help guide the user. Agreed that it would be nice just to have Approve in that case, but there's ramifications of allowing it. We see that where Atlassian still does not enforce Custom Fields to have different names - that is MIND BLOWING to me. 

[John Elder]

AGREE on that point.  :)

Thanks for your insights and thoughts, John!

[John Funk]

You are welcome - and thanks for the questions and dialogue!