How can I prevent multiple users from editing a story at the same time?

[Tracie Mukai]

As we actively work on a story, we are finding that multiple users may be in edit mode for the same story entering data/updates, so changes do not get saved properly. Is there a way to prevent more than one person from editing a story?

[Philipp Barry · Accepted solution]

Hi @Tracie Mukai

In addition to what @Shannon Wright said: Many Jira Align customers have their teams for most use cases working in Jira with the data synchronizing to Jira Align and enabling strategy to execution visibility. 

That being said, Jira offers a little bit better user experience when multiple users make changes to data at similar times if the best practice of saving changes when they are added is being respected - as Jira does not support concurrent editing for users making changes to one field exactly at the same time. - Which is also not a very common use case from our observation.

Best regards

Philipp

[Tracie Mukai]

Thanks for your feedback. I'm starting to wonder if I posted to the wrong community? What is Jira Align? I've always seen just "Jira". Anyway, it sounds like there is no way to lock a story from being edited if someone else is in edit mode and that would be a very useful enhancement for Atlassian to make. Are there any add-ons that perhaps help us achieve this lock?

[Shannon Wright · Accepted solution]

There currently isn't a "lock" for editing within the system that I am aware of, even though, that would be a great idea.   

My question is, even though the stories are assigned to an individual, multiple users are making changes to the story?  Are there multiple assignees for these stories?

[Tracie Mukai]

Thanks for your feedback! When we are finalizing our requirement stories, we put questions directly in the story so it's easier for our business users to find and know exactly what we are referring to. Business users play an active role in reviewing and approving requirements. In turn, we tell them just put their answers in the same place instead of in the comments so it's quicker for us to update our story. The stories are not assigned to a specific user while we're finalizing requirements, only assigned when development begins and that is assigned to a developer. We only assign to one person - I don't believe we can assign to multiple?

[dianne_tennent]

We have the same problem. We collaborate on requirements in the Jira story until they are finalized and assigned to a developer. We've had a lot of problems where we've lost crucial details because someone else had the story in edit mode while we were updating it, so when they save it overrides the changes that were just made by the other person. 

We really need a feature where the story can only be edited by one person at a time.

[Mykenna Cepek]

Confluence pages are better about concurrent editing (other editors visible, less likely to lose work, etc).

I realize it's not as good as Jira issues doing better at this, but it's an option.