Show screen only when transferring from Open to In Progress IF there's a missing assignee?

[Michael Arndt]

I have a screen setup to show when an issue moves from Open to In Progress to allow users to add an assignee since I require it when any item is moved to In Progress. 

Is it possible to show the screen only when there's a missing assignee? 

[Ste Wright]

Hi @Michael Arndt 

There are two options that I can see:

• Condition: Add a condition that "In Progress" cannot be transitioned to without an Assignee
• Multiple Flows: Have multiple flows to incorporate the need.

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Condition:

• A condition requires a value to be present before the transition is made.
• Conditions will "hide" the status from a user's options - so they wouldn't see the status unless they met the condition required

To set this...

1. Go to Jira Settings > Issues > Workflows
2. Select the appropriate workflow from the menu, and choose to "Edit"
3. Select the transition to "In Progress" - and in the pop-up, select Conditions
4. Press "Add Condition" in the next screen
5. Utilise the condition "Value Field" - to ensure Assignee is not blank.

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Multiple Flows:

If a condition isn't what you're looking for - I have seen teams use a multi-flow approach.

This is what I mean:

• There are two separate transitions to "In Progress" 
• One requires Assignee to be populated. There is no screen on this option.
• The second requires Assignee to be empty - this has a screen and a validator to ensure during the transition, Assignee is entered

That way, only one of the two transitions has a screen. This is a brief overview of how to implement this:

1. Go to Jira Settings > Issues > Workflows. Locate your workflow and press "Edit"
2. Select the current transition to "In Progress" - and in the pop-up, select Conditions
3. Add the "Vale Field" condition - to ensure Assignee is not blank.
4. Next, add a second transition to "In Progress" from the previous status. It'll need a different name than your first (eg. To Progress, Progress, Start Progress, etc)
5. Go to Conditions - and add a second "Value Field" condition - to ensure Assignee IS blank
6. Next, go to Validators - and add the "Field Required Validator" - requiring Assignee to be set during the transition
7. Finally, on the original transition pop-up press "Edit" to add the required screen when Assignee is empty

^ A few things to bear in mind:

• If you're utilising an All-to-All transition pattern, the new transition cannot also be All-to-All also.
• If utilising All-to-All, you might want to consider if statuses past "In Progress" also require a condition that Assignee needs to be populated, to stop users jumping over this validation.
• You could add further double-flows to other statuses with the same validator if necessary.

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Let us know if either of these options fit your need!

Ste