Issues being assigned by multiple people at the same time

[Dana Grahf]

Here is the scenario

The issue is submitted and enters the queue

Support Team Member A assigns the issue to themself - at the same time - Team Member B also assigns the issue to themself

As our main open issue queue doesn't auto-refresh on an assignment neither member A nor Member B realizes that someone else has picked up/is working on the issue.

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I was surprised how frequently this is happening - we are asking our team to refresh their screens frequently but wanted to see if anyone else has run into this problem and what they recommended.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

This doesn't happen a lot, because most support teams talk to each other.  I'd start by exploring why they're not working together.  A lot of us ping something into Slack to say "hey, I'll get this one in a sec" if they think someone else might be heading over to grab it.

But, if you are in a situation where a bit more communication or team work isn't going to be the answer, then I'd make it part of your process.

Imagine the workflow for your issues is a simple:

Open -> In progress -> Done

You have a couple of options:

The very explicit, but clumsy one: 

• Change the workflow to Open -> Assigned -> In Progress -> Done. 
• Remove the assignee field from edit
• Put a post-function on the Open -> Assigned transition that sets the assignee to the current user doing the transtion.
• Protect the "assigned" status with "only the current assignee (and maybe the team lead?) can assign issues"

The slightly less obvious option is just to do the "limit who can assign the issue".   You can do this:

• In the permissions, say Assign issue = current assignee, custom group-picker field, and/or custom multi-userpicker
• On the issue create, have a post-function that sets the custom field to the list of groups or users you want to be able to assign
• Have a listener or automation that clears out the custom field when the issue is re-assigned

In both of these solutions, the second person who tries to assign an issue will be told "you can't do this", and be thrown back to an updated screen showing them the assignee the first updater put on it.