Help with approvals in Jira

[Paul Reeves]

I've set up a number of kanban boards and projects and on both I want to be able to add an approval to a task, e.g. assign a task to a user and not allow the task to move from in review to complete without being approved by the nominated approver. I don't seem to be able to get this working correctly as when I've set up a classic project and added an approver, it doesn't actually do anything or prevent the task moving from one stage to another.

Complete novice so please let me know if any further information is correct or if you're able to help please get the crayons at the ready...

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Paul Reeves ,

Welcome to Jira and to the Community. Great question and I'm sure it will take you some studying. But if you're committed, the rewards will be awesome!

The approvers you tried to use is associated with Jira Service Management. While you speak about kanban boards, you seem to be working in Jira Software instead. And right there, what you are trying to do is managed through workflows.

What you essentially want to do here is integrate a workflow condition at the transition from In Review to Complete to allow it to be executed only by the assignee.

Have a look at this article about workflow configuration to get you started.

It is very well possible that additionally you will need to let your users add additional information during the transition as well - e.g. let them change the assignee, or add a comment during the transition. 

You can find more details about adding screens to workflow transitions in this article.

With the condition in place (only assignee) to enable the transition for the current assignee alone and workflow screens to allow capturing information during the transition itself, you can completely close the loop by adding a validator (required field validator) to check if all necessary input was given on the screen.

Good luck!