How can I make workflow buttons reappear?

[Solitonman]

Hi, lately as the local JIRA admin I've been getting issues forwarded to me that the users can't address because, although the issues may be Open and Unresolved, for some reason the workflow buttons don't show up in the JIRA interface. I don't like monkeying around in the database, but I can't find any reason for these items to not show up. Any solutions out there that would enable to maintain interface integrity, or should I just resign myself to setting db values manually and hoping that puts the issue in the appropriate state?

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

[Faryaaz Kassam · Accepted solution]

I've noticed this before, don't really know the reason why. I was able to get rid of the problem by converting the issue to a different type and then back (e.g. Bug -> Improvement -> Bug). Is the problem for several issues or just a handful?

[Solitonman]

I've seen it for a handful recently, and a few times here and there in the past, but not since updating to 5.0.1 a few months back. We're migrating again soon, so I don't know that there's anything to be done at this point.

[Thomas Bores]

I did the same, I used the "Move" fonction (Bug -> Task -> Bug)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You might want to try the "integrity checker". In hard stops of Jira, or crashes, or certain broken plugins, it is possible for Jira to get confused about workflow states. The symptoms are what you're seeing - despite having perfectly valid transitions out of a status, even with no conditions on them (so anyone can perform them), the issue shows no workflow actions.

It's fixed by migrating to another workflow, because that has to write to both tables where the confusion is, and obviously, it forces matching data so the problem goes away. The integrity checker can also find and fix these.

[Solitonman]

Thanks Nic, I ran the integrity checker and didn't find any obvious problems. At this point I think I'll have to wait until the situation occurs again and try once more with it.

[Aaron Humphrey]

This turned out to be helpful for me; I had nearly-identical issues in the same project (created by automated testing) with different transitions, fixable by changing issue type as above. The integrity checker informed me I had duplicate permission schemes, so I told it to fix them, and since then it's worked fine.

[Mike Diehn]

Integrity checker found a score of issues with wrong workflow states and fixed them when I asked it to. Yay.

[Rupendra Soni]

It is fixed by Intergity Checker for me too.

[gagan m s]

dave,

run this query to fix it

UPDATE os_wfentry SET state = 1 WHERE state = 0;

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

NO!  Do NOT do that, it only fixes one of several cases that can happen, and can make it worse rather than better.

Use the integrity check or migrate the workflow.

[Valentina VS]

Hi! We just faced the same problem. For one particular jira-user no transition-buttons were displayed. It was immposible to transition the issue or to change the issue-type.

The permission-check-tool said that the user had the permission to transition issues and to edit issues. But it was still not working.

Workaround : we solved the problem by cloning the jira-issues and deleting the old one. After doing so, all transition-buttons were displayed and everythig worked normally.

(we are using Jira 7.1.6)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

>For one particular jira-user no transition-buttons

That's not the same problem, this problem was about an issue in the data, fixed with the integrity checker.  Cloning would be a poor workaround as you're creating new issues and losing the history on the old one.

[Joe Cullen]

I had this same issue and Andrew Morin was correct in my case: it was a permissions issue. That is, my specific user group wasn't allowed to transition issues. So I added them and it worked like a dream. Thanks, Andrew Morin!

[Meenakshi Hardikar]

Did this issue got resolved? I am facing same challenge for 3 JIRA issues created by particular user. I tried every possible work around but no success. Workflow buttons don't show up on these issues.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It's the same answer - it's likely to be a corrupt issue status vs issue workflow.

The best fix is to run the integrity checker.  The other way to fix it is to force JIRA to re-build the data by changing the workflow (either move the issue(s) to a type or project with another workflow, or change the workflow scheme on the project in such a way that forces a change of workflow)

[David Skreiner]

We got this same problem here – and fixed it by not using the system default workflow.

Longer story:

A project was imported from Mantis into Jira, including several hundred "Status Closed, Resolution Open" issues.

These issues show up as unfinished in the statistics despite being closed.

So I added a transition from Closed to Closed which changes the resolution... to the system default workflow.

Now on some issues (the newer ones) the button for my custom transition showed up. In older issues in the same project, the button for the custom transition was missing. Integrity checker found nothing wrong. Editing of closed issues is allowed. I made sure I have all permissions.

... How I got this fixed:

a) copy the default system workflow

b) set the project to use your copy of the system workflow (migrating all the issues in it)

... and suddenly, bulk change worked fine.

[Mark Symons]

When faced with this kind of problem I find that the Conditions Validator plugin is very useful.

The plugin has now "gone commercial" with JIRA v5.x but there's a lot of new functionality and, thanks to Marketplace, it's real easy to start an evaluation. You should know within a couple of minutes whether it'll help or not.

[Solitonman]

I'll check that out, thanks for the link Mark. It sounds from the description it should be just the thing to help me out in this situation. :)

[Andrew Morin]

One other thing that comes to mind is the issue types that the workflow has been applied to in the new project. Is it all unassigned issue types? Are you using the the same issue Type Scheme accross these projects...? Just something else to look at :-)

[Andrew Morin]

Weird for sure. I'll make the assumption that this project uses the same permission scheme as the other projects that are working fine. maybe re-apply the default workflow see if everything looks okay then apply the custom workflow scheme again to see if it "repairs" the issue. Good luck.....

[Solitonman]

No, as far as I can tell no one can see the buttons, they're not showing up when they should be. Other issues in the same project (and using the same workflow) are behaving appropriately. It seems likely that something happened in the processing of the issue in question that mucked up its db relationships maybe and so it's not working as expected. But I don't know enough of the db relationships and structure to dig through it and figure out where the breakdown occurred.

[Andrew Morin]

As the JIRA administrator do you see the buttons for workflow transitions?

[Solitonman]

Hi Andrew, good questions.

This is a custom workflow. None of the options are showing up. The issue is Open and Unresolved and it needs to be closed. We're using JIRA 5.0.1.

Thanks for asking and responding :)

[Andrew Morin]

Usually a workflow button doesn't appear when there is an issue with the users permissions to execute said workflow option. Can you give a little more detail?

Is this a custom workflow or out of the box workflow?

Which workflow option is not showing up?

If the issue is Open/Unresolved are the users treying to Start progress, Resolve, Close?

Also what version of JIRA are you on?

[Andrew Morin]

Usually a workflow button doesn't appear when there is an issue with the users permissions to execute said workflow option. Can you give a little more detail?

Is this a custom workflow or out of the box workflow?

Which workflow option is not showing up?

If the issue is Open/Unresolved are the users treying to Start progress, Resolve, Close?

Also what version of JIRA are you on?