Stop from assigning somethings that's already assigned

Steve Chavez February 21, 2012

I tried to find this and just end up getting all kinds of articles that don't answer the question.

How can I make JIRA inform a user that something is already assigned?

Here's what happens:
- User (Bob) assigned a ticket to himself and begins working on it
- User (John) sees the ticket is opened because JIRA doesn't refresh the dashboard quick enough, so he assigns the ticket to himself

Now 2 people are spending time on something because neither of them know that they're both working on it or researching it.

How can I make it so something like this happens:
- User (Bob) assigned a ticket to himself and begins working on it
- User (John) sees the ticket is opened because JIRA doesn't refresh the dashboard quick enough, so he ATTEMPTS to assign it to himself, but instead gets a message stating 'this ticket is already assigned' or 'this ticket is already assigned, do you still want to assign it to yourself?'

Thanks a lot for your time.

3 answers

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Renjith Pillai
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February 21, 2012

Wow! Real agile team.

Yeah, this could be achieved.

1. Remove all users, roles and groups from 'Assign Issues' permission from the permission scheme (this will get rid of the 'Assign' button in the issue)

2. For the workflow associated with the issue-type, add a new transistion called 'Self Assign' in all the states that you expect users to do a self assignment with the following conditions

2a. Pre-condition : Assignee field should be empty

2b. Post-Condition : Assign issue to Current User

2c. No screen for transistion

2d. Destination status is the same status from which the transistion is initiated.

3. So once the issue is assigned to someone, no one else will get the 'Self Assign' transistion due to the pre-condition.

Hope this helps.

0 votes
Steve Chavez April 9, 2012

Thanks! I like that. Love your answer from before, but this one is very usable as well for a quick setup and I think our IT team would be more apt to help our cause with this solution.

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Renjith Pillai
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February 21, 2012

In your example, when user John assigns the ticket to himself, Bob will receive an email notification stating that the issue is re-assigned (provided, the 'Current Assignee' is selected in the Notification Scheme for 'Issue Assigned'). Are people reading the Jira emails?

Steve Chavez February 21, 2012

The problem with depending on the e-mail server is that sometimes we will not get the response for several mintues. Many of our tickets are completed within 2 to 15 minutes and e-mails may not be checked until they completed the task.

I'm more curious if there's a way to stop re-assignment in these cases as an immediate way to keep the tech's from wasting time on something they should be (we do perform research, but many of our requests are quick as I mentioned). Could a piece of code possibly be added/scripted to add additional functionality for something like this? An option in permissions that says "Can not assign already assigned items" or "Prompt if already assigned" would be a nice added feature, but I'm looking into a fix/workaround for now if there's a way to implement one.

Steve Chavez February 21, 2012

Oh nice! I didn't even look at it that way. I appreciate your response and yes... we're a very agile team.

Thanks a lot for your help on this!

Renjith Pillai
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April 9, 2012

Another plugin which I just came across which may help in such teams

https://plugins.atlassian.com/plugins/com.atlassian.jira.plugins.whoslookin

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