How to Auto-Approve without specifying an "approver"?

[Grayson Bishop]

Here is our situation:

We are moving a form into Jira SD to track employee information changes (i.e. job title change, work location change, supervisor change, etc.).As part of the migration we are adding approvals for submitted requests, approval is required by the new supervisor (if there is a supervisor change), HR, and a few others.The problem we are running into is a bit of a catch-22 with the optional new supervisor approval... 

I can't figure out how to write the automation rule and configure the "new supervisor field" (optional/required) in order to allow for both: (1) the user from the field to be used as the "approver" and (2) the field to optional.

The issue is coming from the fact that JIRA seems to not let me auto-approve an approval when no "approver" is selected

The best solution we've thought of is really inelegant, namely:

• Make the "new supervisor" field required and suggest to submitter in the hint for the field to put in the current supervisor if there is no supervisor change
• Add a new custom field to the form called "Supervisor Change?" and base the automation rule logic off that.

Any recommendations for how to workaround this more cleanly than our current plan? Thanks!

[Cindy]

Are you still working on this? If so, have you looked into Automation for Jira. I don't quite follow the issue, but I do thing Automation for Jira would solve your problem. Let me know if I can help.