How to make Workflow Designer produce useable diagrams as it did in Jiraversions pre 4.4?

Question

We used the Workflow designer in Jira 4.3 to bring our rather complex development workflow from real life into jira. The workflow designer auto layouted the workflow pretty good, with the steps located in a comfortable manner, curved lines for the transitions, etc. We used to export the layout to a jpg and print it out to stick it to the wall.

Now in jira 4.4 the built in workflow designer is unable to correctly layout our workflow. The steps are still positioned as before, but the lines representing the transitions are straight lines and the bottom part of our workflow is completetly cut off in the exported file, making it unuseable for us.

Though it is still possible to manually create polygonal or bezier lines, the autolayouter seems to have forgotten that.

Maybe it is possible to install the Workflow-Designer as an external plugin (as it was the case in jira 4.3) to see if the problem does not appear there.

Jacques · Answer

don't worry... up until version 5.0.4 this remains a problem:

https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/57336/jira-workflow-designer-doesn-t-remember-layout-any-solution

JamieA · Answer

For viewing/printing (not editing) you could try https://studio.plugins.atlassian.com/wiki/display/JVIZ/JIRA+Workflow+Visualization+Plugin. I think graphviz produces much better layouts especially for complicated workflows.

Disclosure... my plugin.

Radu Dumitriu · Answer

Yes, I've seen problems with the auto layout in 4.4. The best you can do is to report everything to Atl, and upgrade to the next version when it will be available.