Require comment if approval declined

[Charlotte D'Alfonso]

If approver declines  in the approval process, we want a comment required explaining reason fo decline.

[David Friedrich]

Hi @Charlotte D'Alfonso , welcome to the community.

I'm afraid there is no solution for your desired behavior yet in Jira Service Management cloud otb approval workflow. Currently approvals can be given or declined bypassing any validators you could define in a workflow making a comment or other custom field mandatory. This is so any approver can approve / decline via any channel (customer portal, email...).
There is already this feature request (https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDCLOUD-6988) gathering interest that you can vote for.

If you know for certain, that your approvers are all Jira users that could approve or decline by transitioning the ticket to the next status (so no need for giving the approval via the portal or email), you could create a custom workflow and implement a validator in the decline transition requiring a comment or custom field for the decline reason, like @Aaron Geister _Trundl_ also suggested.

[Rick Westbrock]

See also https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDCLOUD-6989 which is for "Ability to display screens on Approve/Deny Service Desk Transitions". Until that has been addressed approvers will have to add a comment first then trigger the Decline transition.

That one is from 2018 also (same submit date as JSDCLOUD-6988) and even with 536 votes it is still stuck in Gathering Interest status. I have no idea how many votes it takes to transition to the next status if 500+ isn't enough.

[Aaron Geister _Trundl_]

@Charlotte D'Alfonso 

Welcome to the community and I hope this finds you well today. 

To do this you will need to add a screen to the decline transition. This then can allow a screen to populate to give a reason why. This would be similar to the pending reason screen which you could copy and then rename and change to suit your needs. 

I found another post about this same question which you can review. 
https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-Service-Management/How-to-force-approver-to-leave-comment-on-decline-of-a-request/qaq-p/771144

If you are using approve or declined screens then you won't be able to have users approve via email and should turn that feature off. This won't work with email. They will need to approve from the help center portal and or with in the ticket.

I hope this helps let me know if you have more questions about this type of configuration.

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Aaron Geister _Trundl_ 

Also setting a screen on a transition, then the screen only is usable for license JSM users. On the portal, also screens a not visible.

Then a user could click decline, but it would be mandatory to first add a comment, before selecting the decline option.

Then you would need to make the decline transition available on the portal.

[Aaron Geister _Trundl_]

@Marc - Devoteam Correct, we can mandate a screen on the portal so the system in the configuration would ask you what you want the resolution to be if you have a resolution screen. 
This type of change doesn't make much since and maybe the best solution is to have users add a comment after the transition? Make this more a process rather then a system configuration. 

@Charlotte D'Alfonso Not sure if that helps but that is how I would handle this situation. Or possibly find a app add-on that can help with this.