How to force the assignee in some of the issue types

[Lance Li]

Hi team,

We have a request from the manager, he found that some of the tickets were resolved/closed/canceled/done without an assignee, which caused some issues with the reporting. They would like to make sure that when the ticket is resolved/closed/canceled, the assignee field must have someone's name there.

My original thought was to use the automation rule:

Trigger: When transition ticket to resolved/closed/canceled/done etc.

Condition: Assignee is empty

If/else block: to match different destination status( different issue types may have different original steps and destination step.

Action: Transition to the specific status

After finishing this automation, I encountered some issues:

1. the automation rule is quite long based on different status on different issue types

2. if the resolved/canceled/closed/done status has no transition to the previous staus, then the automation rule will not run properly. eg. the canceled status has no transition to waiting for support, so it can't perform.

Any ideas or suggestions? Thanks.

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Lance Li,

The default way of doing this, is to include this in your workflow.

Let's assume for a moment that the user who moves an issue into a status is the person who actually is responsible / the most likely assignee at that time. In that scenario, add a postfunction to the transition into that status of type assign to current user. That will always ensure the user executing the transition will also be set as the assignee.

If you see scenarios where you still want to decide who the assignee should be (e.g. when someone else reviews and closes issues from different users), you can add a transition screen to the same transition instead, with the assignee field on it. In this case, you can add a field required validator to the transition to make sure the assignee must be selected.

Hope this helps! 

[Lance Li]

Hi @Walter Buggenhout

Thank you very much for the reply. Would you mind elaborating on the send approach you mentioned? I would like to know how I can achieve it in our workflows. 

When checking the validator on a transition, I can't find "a field required validator".

[Walter Buggenhout]

Right, you are on Data Center 😅 ...

Yes indeed, this does not come out of the box there and even Atlassian recommends using an external workflow app from the marketplace to extend this capability, as you can read in the official support documentation.

If you need solid workflow configuration on Jira DC, having such a workflow extension added is actually a must. So I strongly recommend this.

If that is not an option, you can still apply the other suggestion using a postfunction to set the assignee automatically. You can also do this earlier on in the process, e.g. when someone moves a ticket to In Progress. That will also drastically reduce the chance of having unassigned tickets lying around. 

[Cristiano Alves -Appfire-]

Hi @Lance Li ,

Unfortunately the assignee post-function in Jira Data Center is quite limited.

On the software our team works,  Jira Misc Workflow Extension (JMWE), you should be able to do expand this option, just add the function that will become available. Here is the configuration screen of said function:

You are able to assign it to either the current user, the reporter, lead, last commented user and so on, while also being able to set up custom conditions.

If you need something like field required validator are also available from it, so you should also be able to set the assignee field as mandatory before closing the ticket.

Please contact our support if you have any other questions about this validator, or JMWE in general.

Regards.

[Sebastian Krzewiński]

Hi @Lance Li 

Automation rules are working post factum which mean that user will close unassigned ticket and then rule will do something. IMO possible solutions:

• condition on resolve transition that only assignee can do this transition
• add transition screen with assignee and set validator
• add post function on resolve transition that user who will trigger this transition will be assigned to the ticket
• set unique field configuration for issue type and set assignee as required

Regards,

Seba