Multi-level approval and approver groups for change requests

[Angela Salunga]

I need to implement more than 2 levels of approval in change requests depending on the nature of the change. Approver names will vary based on the change. How can this be setup in jira service management? Thanks.

[Dirk Ronsmans]

Hi @Angela Salunga ,

I'm afraid that with out of the box JSM you are very limited in what you can do in the range of Approvals.

You seem to have a 2 part question:

1. Groups instead of users: i'm afraid that will not be possible, the approval is linked to a person and not a group. The closest you'll get is to add all the users and set the approval step to be approved when 1 person approves.
2. Multiple levels of Approval: This is a big one. Here you have a couple of options (but they are all workarounds)
   1. Set a fixed amount of levels you can go and incorporate that in to your change flow (like having a status "manager approval"/"ISO Approval"/"Finance Approval") and use some kind of automation to route your issue through that workflow. Imho, this is very maintenance heavy and complex
   2. Add all of the approvers in one go (based on some kind of automation again) and set the approval stage to require all of them to approve. This will work but if you have approver levels move up based on the hierarchy you will be spamming the highest level immediately while the lowest level could decline already.

An other option would be to go the route of an app on your instance. A quick search leads me to https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1220490/approval-path-for-jira?hosting=cloud&tab=overview or https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?hosting=cloud&product=jira-service-management&query=approval

which both seems promising..

If you don't want to create a enormously complex flow I suggest installing a trial of those and see if it fits your needs. For a complex approval flow I would think this justifies the cost.

[Darryl St_ Pierre]

This is a great answer.

Also note that improvements have been rolled out in JSM that now allow Approval Groups.