What is the difference between resolutions Declined and Won't Do?

[Paul Spurling]

I am starting to customize our Service Management system for our workflow. 

In issue resolutions, I see two that seem very similar.

Won't Do  - This issue won't be actioned.
Declined  - This issue was not approved.

My searches haven't found any clarification on when each of these is the appropriate resolution.  Can any of you point me to an explanation?

Thank you.

Paul

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

That's probabably something to take to your business teams. 

The two terms are similar, but not quite the same, in English, they are implying different reasons for not doing anything more on the issue, exactly as you state.  "We won't do this" and "This was not approved" are different things.  There is probably a reason that your leaders want to report on issues that are not approved vs ones that are flagged as "won't do". 

I see "cancelled" on some sites as well, representing the cases where the original reporter says "actually, no, I don't want this any more", before it is approved or the developers start work on it.

The best thing to do is ask why your organisation has got these resolutions available (it may well be that they've just accepted the defaults, which is fine).  If no-one is actually reporting on the different reasons for closing issues, then you might just want to drop any extraneous ones and simplify your systems.

[Paul Spurling]

Thank you, Nic. This is helpful.  

We're in a fairly unique situation with implementing Jira.  We're a rapidly growing non-profit organization, and most of our business leaders do not have a background in formal business processes.  I'm responsible both for configuring the system and helping the business teams learn how to utilize tools and procedures like this.

Everything in our Jira environment is still the default settings, including these resolutions. Now that we have used it as our IT helpdesk for a few months, I'm beginning to implement changes to fit our requirements.

It's good to know we don't have to keep all the default options.

[John Funk]

Hi Paul,

I would say it’s whatever you want them to be. You define that as an organization. If it’s too confusing to have both, just get rid of one as to me, there’s too many resolutions anyway. You’re organization needs to bring clarity as to the meaning of which ones they use and get rid of the rest.

[Paul Spurling]

Thanks John. I agree clarity is essential, and the ability to trim out items we don't need will be helpful.

[Mikael Sandberg]

The way we are using these two resolutions in JSM is that Declined is set when there is an approval process, so if a approver declines the request it is moved to Closed with the Declined resolution. Won't Do is used if no action is taken, for example if a user request a change to something that goes against policy, or if what is being requested is not feasible to do.

[Paul Spurling]

Thank you Mikael.  I thought Declined may be related to an approval process but wasn't certain about that.  In the future, we may be able to utilize this differentiation.

[Evaldas]

Yes, companies are free to have whatever they want, but let's see what Atlassian is providing in a Standard Atlassian Template (for JSM):

My interpretations (for the confusing ones) are:

• Won't Do - used by Agents (solvers) who state the Issue won't be solved due to some reasons (impossible to do, contradicts to internal policies etc.)... this could also cover the "Cannot Reproduce" and "Known Error" options (unless you want to expand your statistics/analytics).
• Declined (also could be named "Cancelled") - usually means that Reporter (issue "owner") intentionally cancelled the Issue before it was done/implemented (perhaps it was not needed anymore etc.)
• Rejected - this was used in Approval process where Approver rejected the Issue (also possible to be interchanged with Declined if company is using terms "Approve/Decline" instead of "Approve/Reject")
• Frozen - the term sounds like "Put on Hold for a long time...", however I'm not sure when it makes sense to have such separate Resolution, as it's not interim status, but final... and if have options like "Won't Do" or "Declined"/"Cancelled"...
• Unassigned - not sure about this one either, but I guess it's for those rare cases where the situation is "none of the above is suitable"... (same as "Other")