Need help with approval process

[Ken Lucio]

Hi,

 I am new to Jira, and need some help choosing the correct path.

I am looking to set up a client reimbursement project, and am struggling to find the best way to meet my requirements. I do not have a lot of time to explore every plug-in or jira product to find the best one. I really need to just travel don a path that is definitely going to work.

I am currently working with self-hosted Jira Core and Jira Software, and do not want to use Jira Service Desk unless it is the only (or far greater) solution.

I have read many posts / documents that talk about approval workflows in Jira Core, but they are vague and leave many questions unanswered. Such as:

How does the issue get into the “needs approval state”? Is it a drop-down selection set to “needs approval” that triggers the transition?

How does approver approve or reject the request? Do they have to manually edit the issue?

Jira Service Desk looks to be promising, but I cannot spend time or money on dead ends.

Please point me in the right direction.

Requirements:

• Multiple teams will submit reimbursement requests.
• Reimbursements less than 300 need to be approved by the each team’s leader. 300 - 3000 need approval by middle management, 3000 – 20000 need approval by upper management, and above 20000 need approval by the CEO
• There needs to be a clear, easy way to transition the issue to the “needs approval” status, perhaps, by clicking a button or setting a field after creation. The transition has to be dummy proof, (No accidently assigning to the wrong approver group) and cannot go straight into that state after creation because the submitter needs to be able to correct mistakes before submission.
• Approvers, ideally, will be able to approve request via email, without ever going into Jira.
• There needs to be a clear, easy way to click “approve” or “reject” from within the issue. Ideally, this would be possible without entering the edit screen.
• The issue needs to be locked (un-editable) once approved, and should only be editable by the approver and admins while in the “needs approval” state.
• Once approved, a simple notification is sent to the submitter, and another, more detailed, notification sent to the accounting department.

[Ken Lucio · Accepted solution]

After much time reading and reading and reading, i figured out that nothing made sense to me because a permission problem was preventing me from seeing any of the transition buttons. It turns out that no one on the project had the transition issue permission. Once i figured that out, everything became more clear to me, as i was able to see the transition buttons. Also, it appears that script runner and JWFE are both possible options for helping to meet my requirements.