How to hide a transition button meant for SLA-based automation, without disabling the transition

[David Wang]

I have 3 transitions from an existing status, 2 of them are meant for the customer to use depending on what they decide. The third one is meant for automation, I have it set that WHEN a specific SLA timer is breached, IF the status matches the one I mentioned earlier, THEN it should use that third transition. My concern is, I don't want the customer to be able to actively click that third transition, it is only when the customer has not actioned the issue for X amount of time, then it automatically uses that third transition.

I have looked at conditions and post-functions, and I am not sure how to best use those tools in this scenario. In short: how do I hide the transition without disabling it? 

Let me know if anything needs clarification. Thanks in advance!

Dave 

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi David,

If I understand your scenario well, you have transitions that you want to be available to you users/customers and an automated transition that you want to hide from those users.

I suspect that you run the automated transition as a specific bot or system user. You might want to consider adding a condition to your automated transition that only allows it to be executed by that user. You could do that through one of these conditions:

• User is in Group (set up a group which contains the user that should run your automation rule)
• User is in project role (you would need to set up or choose a project role that does not contain your 'customers')

If you have a group or role specifically for your automation user(s), the transition will be executable by your automation rule(s), but not visible to any users that are not part of the automation group or role.

[David Wang]

Walter, thanks so much for your input! Your suggestion of using an automated bot would be pretty cool. Do you have any add-ons you'd recommend that are capable of this service? I'll have a look around myself on Monday when I'm back in the office. I'll still need to decide if your solution is the optimal one though, because my original intent was to accomplish this without needing to acquire third party, external solutions. Not discrediting you for this cool solution though, again, thanks!

[Walter Buggenhout]

From your description, I was totally thinking that you had set this up entirely already. If your are on Server, you could use the free JIRA Automation plugin by Atlassian labs, which is officially unsupported, but widely used and free. If you're on Cloud, that one is not available unfortunately. There is a commercial alternative though through the Automation for JIRA add-on.

[Jack Brickey]

David,

If you are talking about transitions visible on the portal, which i assume is the case since you are speaking of customers here, you have to make them visible w/in the workflow. Select the transition in question and make it visible or only if you wish to expose on portal.

[David Wang]

Hi Jack,

Thanks for your input on this. However, I failed to mention in my original post that this is not via the portal, and I used the term "customer" quite loosely, so apologies for that mix up.

Currently, this is the workaround I have found since posting this question:

1. Edit my desired workflow, then select or highlight the transition I plan on "hiding"
    
2. Add a condition to this transition to look for a specific value of a specific field. I am careful not to designate a custom field, because those aren't available when I build my Automations (at least I think that is the case, based on the testing I've been doing). 
   
   In my particular case, I am using the "Environment" field because it's unused in my project and not relevant. (Be sure to hide Environment from all screens) 
   
   The value that this condition checks for the Environment field: "Unlock Third Transition" or something of that nature
    
3. Next, go back to the Automation configuration page and select your Automation that has the SLA-breached event, and create a THEN-event that edits a specific field (Environment field in this case), and automatically enter the string value "Unlock Third Transition" 
    
4. Ensure that this newly created THEN-event is placed above the THEN-event that actually uses the "hidden" transition (because if you try to perform the transition before populating the Environment field, the condition checks and doesn't see "Unlock Third Transition" value, then it will fail)

I realize the "Environment" field is not being used as intended, so this is definitely not the right way to do it, but it seems to be working okay for now. It's a pretty convoluted workaround to be honest. 

Jack, do you or anyone else have a better soultion?

Much appreciated,

Dave