Changing issues status to the same value triggers notifications

Question

When you are on an issue that has a Status of "To Do", in a Workflow that allows all transitions to the status "To Do", you have a button to "transition the current issue to the 'To Do' status".

This triggers an activity on the issue with the text as

XXX made changes - 4 minutes ago
Status To Do [ 10000 ]      To Do [ 10000 ]

This activity also triggers the email notification.

Why is it possible to transition an issue from a status to the same status? Is this not a bug?

Christian Czaia [Decadis AG] · Answer

Many reasons 
 To restrict the editing of certain fields to only a specific project role (using conditions and a specific screen on the transition) , scripted calculations (using post-functions), setting field values / flags (post-function)... Cheers

berndlinde · Answer

But why would one want to transition an issue from its current status to the same status?

Christian Czaia [Decadis AG] · Answer

No, it's called a global transition (marked as -->ALL in your workflow). Since it most probably triggers the Generic event in the workflow post-function you receive emails.

You are probably using a simplified workflow, designed for Agile boards. If you are on a board you can't transition issues to to same status they are in. To prevent this you could manually configura the transition (e.g. condition / not out of the box and you end up with a workflow that is NOT simplified anymore) or change the notification scheme .

Cheers

Christian