Question or two about using REST API to update JIRA issues

Question

My company is using the REST API in JIRA to push incidents from our incident tracking software into JIRA for development to work.  One issue we're running into is that if a field is not present on the edit screen, then the JIRA issue is not updated successfully (for instance, updates to the description and summary in our incident tracker don't make it to JIRA).  Is this a known problem with any workarounds, or is there a better way to make those fields non-editable to our users in JIRA?  These fields are values that come from the incident tracker and thus shouldn't need to be edited in JIRA by development.

A somewhat related question is that I am planning on using the JIRA Suite Utilities plugin to do some validation (presence) of field values and hide a couple workflow transitions.  Will REST updates from our incident tracker go through this plugin, or does the plugin only operate on issues that are actually open and operated on within JIRA?

FYI, I'm not the person in charge of developing the integration, just the lucky QA person who is testing it.

Thanks!

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted Answer

It's not a "problem", it's by design.  REST respects the configuration that the rest of the application follows.  Otherwise, you're opening up a mess of contradictory and inconsistent behaviours which usually ends up in errors, or worse, a security breach.

If you want to do something with REST, you should enable Jira to do it on-screen.

That goes for the Jira suite utilities too - if you enforce validation using any of the functions it provides, they will apply to REST operations as well.

The approach I'd take here is priviliged users.  Set up transitions in the workflow that use conditions like "only the integration user can do this".  Remove the fields you want to protect from the edit screens, then put them on these protected transitions (they don't even have to change status).  Then your REST developer will have to use "move issue through workflow, while logging in as the integration user".