Configuring for Approvals

[Brian Dinga]

Hey All!

It's been a while since I've used Jira and it looks like lots of changed.  I'm now managing a team and trying to configure my Jira board to reflect our process.  It's nothing out of the ordinary but I'm having a hard time finding the information.  I'm also not a full admin so there is confusion on my part when I go through the documentation.  I am hoping someone experienced can direct me in the right direction as I'm having a hard time cutting through the Google-Static.

What I am trying to do is sort out 'tickets for testing', 'tickets for development' and lastly 'tickets for approval'.  

The idea being that developers can mark tickets as 'done'. Testers test to approve/reject. Stakeholders can reject/approve tickets.  Any rejection sends tickets back to the development lanes.

Is the best approach to have separate boards with specific board permissions?  Is there a portion where you can setup roles within lanes? Aka. Testers can only move between 'Developer Done', 'Testing-Approved' and 'TODO'?

Any insights would be appreciated! Thanks

[Derek Fields (RightStar)]

Brian - You need to be a Jira Administrator to update the workflow to add the conditions. It is not something that you do as a Board admin.

[Brian Dinga]

Great thats a tremendous led!

[Derek Fields (RightStar)]

The best way to set this up with with Conditions on the workflow transitions. You would set up a condition on the transition to Done that restricts it to users in the Developers role. Same with the other transitions. This will prevent a user from being able to move a ticket on a board to a transition that isn't valid for them. 

Keep in mind that Boards only enforce the workflows of the underlying issues. A Board is not itself a workflow.

Hope this helps.

[Brian Dinga]

I think it may :)

Is this 'condition' is that adding a rule?

Is there a link you could provide on how to do this?  I'm wondering if its a Jira-Admin thing not a board-admin thing

[Oliver Siebenmarck _Polymetis Apps_]

Hi Brian,

Conditions are a workflow-thing that can be configured at many different levels. A workflow basically mandates how an issue can transition from one status to the next. Or in board terms, from one column to the next. You can think of the board as a visualization of your workflow. 

A condition manages what kind of transition a user can see on the UI or whether they can drag an issue to a specific column, thus enforcing a rule. That rule might be that only a developer can close an issue, just like Derek suggested. So, what you described can be implemented out-of-the box with check whether a user has a specific role. 

If you want to dive in deeper into workflows, a good starting point is the Working with workflows page of Atlassian's documentation.

And if you ever find Jira's out-of-the-box conditions lacking, there are great apps out there to extend what Jira can do, such as our own Cloud Workflows. (Full disclosure: I work for the Vendor who created this app. Let me know if you need any help getting started.)

[Brian Dinga]

Awesome thanks for the info!

I don't have admin access so I wasn't able to find this section.

I'll forward the link and see if we need your application or not!