Force users to log on status change in Team-Managed Projects

Question

Hey Community, hope you are all doing well ;)

Just have a question about the Team-Managed projects, which are excellent, but I do want to have more features in there :)

For example, I want to force the users to log their work on status change. I did it successfully on Company-Managed projects and it works efficiently. So, it would not be possible to change the status from "X" to "Y" without logging the "Time Spent" in the dedicated field.

I did it using the Jira powerful validations and on the issue transition,

I want to implement the same on another small Team-Managed project for the design team.

I tried to manage it using the Team-Managed project automation, but could not success ;(

So, please let me know your opinion about this feature to add in Team-Managed project, and please share with me your experience about the workarounds or solutions of this.

Thanks,

Arthur

Piotr Stefaniak [HeroCoders] · Answer

Hello @Arthur Harutyunyan

Clockwork developer here. I think you will have hard times trying to implement what you want, but I'm speculating that if you'd loose some of your requirements it maybe would be possible to achieve what you want.

Let me first advertise something which I'll use as a base for the solution I propose: https://docs.herocoders.com/clockwork/prevent-a-transition-if-no-time-logged

This is built-in functionality for Clockwork Pro (and I assume you don't want to go with paid version of Clockwork currently) that probably works as you would expect **for company-managed Jira projects only**. The **team-managed** projects were unsuitable for this kind of functionality due to API missing in them. However, I speculate that you could try to replicate that specific functionality using some clever automations + hidden custom fields to store the state. Here is the gist how it works:

* (a) when user transits issue to new status, your custom automation should reset the "gatekeeper" status - i.e. update some custom field to 0
* (b) when user updates issue with new worklog, your another custom automation should update "gatekeeper" status, i.e. update aforementioned custom field to 1
* (c) use built-in validators to prevent transiting issue to another status until "gatekeeper" is closed - i.e. a validator that requires aforementioned custom field to be in 1 before allowing to move to "Test"

The idea is that whenever Clockwork Free is used to log the work, it underneath goes to Jira and creates/updates that issue's Jira native worklog. That's the moment I speculate your custom automation from (b) would kick in and mark the issue as "ready to transit".

It wouldn't allow you to log the time and transit issue on the same transition screen (because I believe there are no transitions screens on **team-managed** projects, but even if they are, there are no Jira API for Clockwork to hook there with its logging time stuff), but it would allow you to require your users to first log some time via Clockwork Free, and only then allow your users to transit the issue to another status.

If you go that route, please ping me later with your findings - I'm curious if that approach turns out to be feasible or not (and for what reasons).

Cheers and good luck,
Piotr Stefaniak
HeroCoders developer

Arthur Harutyunyan · Answer

Hi @Patrik Korovsky thanks for suggesting that workaround. I will dig in a little bit to try to find a workaround using the automation. I am not that optimistic though, because I am using an external plugin for time logs in my Team-Managed projects which brings more complexity in this flow.

So, I want to somehow force the users to use "Clockwork Free" logging plugin !!

And to answer to @Trudy P Claspill the requirement is the following:

The workflow I have for this Team-Managed project is the following:

ToDo -> InProgress -> Test -> Validated/Reopened

I want to force the users to add a log in "Clockwork Free" once the issue is transitioned from "InProgress" to "Test".

Thanks guys!!

Arthur

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello Patrik,

I inferred from the author's post that they wanted time logged each time the issue was transitioned to another status, to capture the time spent along the way, as can be done with a Transition Screen in a Workflow for a Company Managed project. Your solution only ensures that the total Time Spent on the issue was not 0 when it is transitioned.

But your inference might be correct and mine might be wrong. :-)

@Arthur Harutyunyan

Can you clarify your requirement?