Blocking transitions when Blocked by issue is not in xyz or further status

Question

Our dev team has not been honoring "is blocked by" issue links.  Clearly a training issue but am wondering if there's a workflow solution that would prevent them from moving a ticket to "in progress"(or one of many statuses past backlog) if the blocker is not yet "done".

Ideally I'd like them to be able to start the blocked ticket as long as the blocker is in one of 7 different statuses but keeping things vague for this inquiry. I'm sure there's an obvious solution I'm just missing, please suggest. TIA

*I was unable to find anything in workflow conditions/validators but perhaps I missed.*

Mark Segall · Answer

Hi @Kim P - I've had similar requests to this in the past and created a workaround leveraging the flag field (you could also use a component or label if you don't want to use flag) and a couple automations...

AUTOMATION 1: FLAG WHEN BLOCKED

The flag will be used in your workflow validation (described later).  This makes sense anyway, because if the issue is blocked, it is safe to assume it's a flagged issue and you get the bonus of the visual indicator that the issue is blocked.

* TRIGGER:  Issue block
* ACTION: Flag the destination issue

AUTOMATION 2: REMOVE FLAG WHEN NO LONGER BLOCKED

* TRIGGER: Issue Transitioned to Done
* BRANCH: Blocks* CONDITION: All blocked issues = Done
* ACTION: Remove Flag

WORKFLOW TRANSITION VALIDATOR

* Use the regular expression check against the Flag field* ^.{0}$

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Kim P

Jira does not natively support that level of sophistication in the conditions/validators for workflows.

Is it an option for you to acquire a third party app to extend the capabilities of workflow conditions and validators?

If not, you might be able to customize a workaround where you use a boolean field to keep track of whether or not there is a linked issue that is related as "is blocked by" that is in one of the states that should prevent the issue from transitioning. Then you might be able to set a workflow condition/validator based on that custom field. You would use an automation rule to evaluate the linked issues and update the field. I say might because I have not actually tried to work this out.