Add a new Transition in an existing Workflow: You cannot perform this operation on a draft workflow

[Bernard Van Heuverswyn]

Hi all,

All of our 23 "Company-Managed" projects use the same Workflow.

I need to add a new transition between 2 existing statuses in this "global" Workflow we created.
But Impossible to publish the modification (which is done automatically on a Draf) because I get the error message "You cannot perform this operation on a draft workflow".
I've gone through help texts, like the one offered in this answer (https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/Editing-a-workflow-when-it-shows-You-cannot-perform -this/ba-p/1854392) but it doesn't work because "Add Existing" doesn't exist (in step 3).
How should it be done without disturbing these 23 real projects which are widely used?
There must be a solution, for example to temporarily deactivate the workflow, modify it and reactivate it? Or create a Clone and once modified apply it to REPLACE an existing one with automatic assignment to all projects that used the old version?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

There is no "deactivate workflow", it's just a display.  An inactive workflow simply means it is not used by any project.  To "deactivate", you'd need to remove it from every project!

Your last line is what the answer in your link is saying - clone the workflow, the new one will be inactive, so you'll be able to edit it directly, then replace the old one with the new one when you're happy with your changes!