Help! Workflows are so annoying

Question

How do I add transitions in already existing workflows? Every time I try, it says "You cannot perform this operation on a draft workflow.". After publishing the workflow and trying again, it doesn't work, cause as soon as I edit it, it becomes a draft.

Help!!

Mariam_v6ks5e · Answer

thank you for the info. I'll try your suggestion

Mariam_v6ks5e · Answer

thank you for responding! I'll check the case now

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

I'm going to take a guess that you've run into a long standing and annoying flaw in thw workflow editor.

The draft edit can not add transitions to a step (status) that does not already have outgoing transistions.  There's a long essay possible on where the problem is, but Atlassian have said that fixing it is way down the priority list (probably meaning never going to get fixed) because there's a straightforward workaround and it only affects a small number of people (admins who have never seen the problem before, or inherited affected workflows from others)

One quick thing to try which seems to help sometimes:  Add a global transition into one of the other steps in the workflow.  For example All -> Open.  Then re-try adding the transition you want to add.  (Remove the all -> open later)

If that does not help, then you will need to

* Copy the workflow to a new copy
* Add your transition in the new copy (the editor for unassociated workflow does not have this bug)
* Amend all the workflow schemes using the old workflow, swapping it out for the new one