Prevent users from editing timeline / changing scheduling

[Joel Williams]

Hello community,

I have a company managed Scrum project, and my team are utilising the task scheduling and project planning functionalities.

I have been requested to find a way to prevent Epic start and due dates from being edited once they've been agreed. I've done this by creating a new in progress status called "Timing Agreed" and then changed the permissions for this status so that the issue can't be edited. Works great.

There is a problem however; it seems users can go to the project timeline, and still change the start and due date by dragging the timeline bar around. This is exactly what we're trying to prevent - can anyone offer any guidance on if there is anything else we can do?

Thank you!

[Lisa Forstberg · Accepted solution]

Hi @Joel Williams ,

Welcome to the community!

You seem to be on Jira cloud standard so with "project planning functionality" you probably mean the timeline view of the scrumboard. 

Do you mean that users can change these fields even though the status of the Epic is "In progress" when you expect the fields to be non editable ? 

Another way of solving your need might be to remove them from the edit screen but instead have the fields only to appear on a specific transition screen. Adding further control would be to limit who can perform that transition via conditions. This might however be a bit counter intuitive for users. 

best of luck!

/Lisa

[Joel Williams]

Hi Lisa, thank you so much for your response.

You are correct, it's the timeline screen of the scrum board that I'm talking about. In this new in progress status that I've created, users are not able to edit the start and due dates of tasks in fields within the task itself, but they are able to change both fields by dragging the timeline bar around - it's this that we want to prevent. I've attached a couple of screenshots, this task is in a non-editable state but by dragging it across the timeline I've changed the start and due dates!

Thanks again

[Lisa Forstberg]

Thank you for the image

I suspect the timeline is not respecting your non-editable status permission. 

I have just tested removing the fields from the edit screen but that doesn't prevent the user from changing the fields from the timeline view I am afraid. 

Another solution is to use the permission "Schedule issue" and limit this to a project role. (schedule issue means ability to edit an issues due date). Users not in the assigned project role will get an error message "something went wrong" which is not too pretty, but does the job.  This will however affect ALL issues in the project.

br

Lisa

[Joel Williams]

Hi Lisa, thank you for your response - I'll look into that as another option.