After publishing a workflow, I get an error trying to add a transition.

[Phil Bustin]

Error is "You cannot perform this operation on a draft workflow."

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

There are some things that you cannot do in a draft workflow.  It's a long-standing flaw, and the number of things you can't do has shrunk since draft workflows were introduced, but we're still stuck with some.

The one that usually stands out is adding an outgoing transition to a step that does not yet have any outgoing transitions.  There's no good data reason for not allowing it (if you could do it, there's no data migrations it might cause), but the code is not as simple as you might expect and it's actually very hard to fix properly.

Anyway.  There is a simple work-around:

• Copy the workflow you are trying to change
• Edit that workflow (it won't be associated with anything, so it will never give you "can't do this to draft" errors), adding in the stuff you were blocked on
• Save the workflow
• Go into each workflow scheme using the old workflow and edit them, replacing the old one with the edited new workflow (there may be some migration steps, but it will walk you through them)

[Curt Holley]

Nice one @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- as usual, amazing depth of knowledge.

@Phil Bustin the notion of copying the workflow is one I highly recommend regardless, as it is a great safeguard against errors (human or Atlassian flaws)

[Phil Bustin]

I was able to add the transition today without an error, using the Text view, except that the only "from" status that offered an "Add transition" link in the Edit function was the status positioned before the "from" status I wanted.  Once I added the transition, I went to the diagram view and dragged the start of the transition line to the status I wanted.

[Curt Holley]

Hi @Phil Bustin 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

What is it you were doing to the workflow? can you provide a screenshot? (to assist us be able to assist you)

Also, is this workflow for a Jira Work management project, or Jira software??

[Phil Bustin]

I was able to add the transition today without an error, using the Text view, except that the only "from" status that offered an "Add transition" link in the Edit function was the status positioned before the "from" status I wanted.  Once I added the transition, I went to the diagram view and dragged the start of the transition line to the status I wanted.

This is a Jira Work Management workflow.