creating forward and back transitions in a Workflow.

sn December 4, 2017

hi,

users of JIRA 7.3 Server.

we have a custom workflow with set transitions. users have asked to provide the ability to move back ward transitions for each status. This is to allow skipping certain statuses while maintaining the integrity of our WF.

I see that I have to manually add a back transition at every status to provide the ability to go back.

I know there is an add on with the ability.

Is there a better approach. if so, please let me know some of the disadvantages of doing it manually.

 

Thanks !

 

 

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Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]
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December 4, 2017

There is concept of global transitions in JIRA. It allows every other status in the workflow to transition to the selected status. Select Allow all statuses to transition to this one in the properties panel for the transition, if you want to enable it.

This will be useful when you want to reach status from every other status. For example, it gives you the ability to close or resolve an issue from any other status.

If your transitions cannot fit in to this model, you will have to create individual transitions for going back and forth.

sn December 5, 2017

thanks for the response jobin but we need transitions to go to only previous status.

I saw there are some add-ons with that capability. could you suggest any of the ones you have used

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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December 5, 2017

There are no add-ons that do this.

You need to add the transitions.

There are then add-ons which can give you conditions of "only allow this transition if it goes back to the last status"

sn December 6, 2017

hi nic ,

okay. i'm not following -so, if i have to add the backward transitions how is  this (https://blog.valiantys.com/en/expert-tips/back-previous-state-jira-workflow) add-on helping me with conditions ? i guess i'm trying to see if the add-on will add any value. 

i saw in one of the posts that a condition can be added that only JIRA Admins can use the back transitions. can this be customized to groups/individual project roles ?

the problem we are facing is - during the daily stand ups,if user is accidentally moving the issue to a status, our workflow doesn't allow them to easily go back. we have certain statuses as mandatory, for auditing purposes.

so, there was a request to add back to previous status. my concern is adding so many transitions is going to be very confusing to the user.

i'm looking at undo transition plug-in but looks like that will provide the undo option to all workflows. we are transition from waterfall to agile and we want this ability only for agile workflows

any suggestion appreciated.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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December 6, 2017

The only way to change status in Jira is with a transition.  If you want to go backwards through your workflow, that is fully supported, but it needs the transition there to be able to do it.

With no conditions in place, a transition will be available to the user.  If you place a condition like "only previous status" on a back-moving transition, than it could be used in many places, but will be blocked unless it lands on the previous status the issue was in.

sn December 8, 2017

okay. now, i understand. thanks Nic !

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