Workflow/Notifications Help Badly Needed

[Eric Umali]

Our company is transitioning from our previous Help Desk application to Jira ITSM. Normally, I'd be researching and scouring the internet for help with my current task, but other issues have sped up the clock considerably. I'll try to describe the behavior I'm wanting to replicate in Jira and hopefully there's an expert or two who might be willing to explain how to get it done in as clear and straightforward a way as possible.

So an important and common service request we handle is the transfer of employees between satellite locations. Months of meetings between us, HR, payroll, etc. resulted in a workflow we could all understand and utilize, that works like this:

1. Employee transfer ticket for User created by Manager, including all pertinent information about User. Manager sets the ticket to a custom status "Ready for Next Department" and submits it.
2. Automatic actions kick off: the ticket is assigned to the person in Next Department with a tech account. Next Department is notified by email that there's an incoming transfer ticket on its way.
3. Person in Next Department does what they need to do for the transfer. They set the ticket to a custom status "Ready for HR" and saves it.
4. Automatic actions: ticket is assigned to a tech account in HR. Email notification to HR.
5. Person in HR does their thing, sets the ticket to a custom status "Ready for Payroll/IT" and saves.
6. Automatic actions: ticket is assigned to a tech account in IT. Email notification to Payroll and IT departments about the ticket.
7. IT does its thing and closes the ticket.

I've been bouncing between articles about workflows, transitions, events, notification schemes, etc. and haven't been able to piece together a clear step-by-step method to accomplish the goal. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hi Eric,

This seems to be very straightforward and doable. You would create a workflow with each of those statuses in a linear fashion. 

Then create automation rules for Issue Transitioned trigger for each status that the issue transitions to - one rule per status. In that rule you can assign the issue and email the user. 

Is there something specifically that you are having trouble with? 

[Eric Umali]

Thanks for pointing me at automations. We've only scratched the surface of Jira, and we're coming off a much less featured help desk solution, so it's a search for everything.

At the moment, I've got a workflow created and am trying to create the first automation rule, but I'm not seeing any of those custom statuses I created for it as options for the endpoints of the rules.

[John Funk]

Can you share the rule that you have? Also, be sure to publish your workflow, and then refresh the automation rules page so they will show up. 

[Eric Umali]

There really isn't much to the rule:

I've published the workflow, and refreshed the pages mutliple times. Now that I'm looking through the admin pages, I'm going to guess that the fact I see the Employee Transfer Request workflow when I go to Settings > Issues > Workflows but not when I open Project Settings > Workflows has something to do with it?

[John Funk]

Yes, that would be a factor. Is this a Global rule? Or specific to a single project? If to a project, is the workflow in that project? If not, it would need to be added. 

[Eric Umali]

Thank you! I managed to get the workflow added to the appropriate project, which let me configure the rule using the custom statuses, assignments, and notifications as I needed. Did a test run and all looks good. I appreciate all the help.

[John Funk]

Great! If that took care of it, please click the Accept answer button above to close this one out. Thanks!

[Joseph Chung Yin · Accepted solution]

@Eric Umali -

I agreed with what @John Funk suggested.  When you stated that you are not seeing your custom status created in your custom WF in automation rule design, can you provide more specific details, so we can assist you further?

Best, Joseph Chung Yin

Jira/JSM Functional Lead, Global Technology Applications Team

Viasat Inc.

[Eric Umali]

Sure. Here are two screen shots. The first is from Issues > Issue Attributes > Statuses, where I created the custom statuses I want to use:

The second is from Project Settings > Automation > Rule Builder, where those three statuses are missing from the drop down menus when trying to set up the issue transitioned rule.

[Jeremy Cooley]

Hi @Eric Umali 

Glad you were able to get some support here. Please let us know if you still need help figuring this out. 

Also, we recently created an HR Professionals community group that I wanted to put on your radar. It's just getting started so there isn't a ton of activity yet, but we're hoping to make it a place where customers, community leaders, and product managers can talk about how they are using (or wish they could be using) Atlassian Products for HR applications. If that sounds interesting, check it out & join! See you in the group! Thanks! 

Jeremy 

cc: @John Funk @Joseph Chung Yin 

[John Funk]

Joined the group! Thanks for letting us know!