Approver not a user

[Anthony R]

I have a system access request form I'm building where the requestor and the approver may be outside of my organisation and never used our JSM instance before and they may never ever need to use it again so I don't want to force them to log in.

The last 2 fields in my form are Approver and Email Confirmation to, both of these are using the standard fields from JSM.

In testing I've found that the Requestor can be anyone which is exactly what I want e.g. Joe.Bloggs@gov.uk

But if the Approver's email address is not an existing JSM user (customer) I get the following error message "Pick another user as the selected user doesn't exist". Ideally the Requestor should be able to nominate anyone to approve their request E.g. DonaldDuck@gov.uk

From an organisational perspective I want a requestor to be able to nominate any approver they want, my service agents then have strict processes that mean they decide whether the approver is appropriately delegated AFTER the request is approved. 

I'm certain other organisations have struck this problem so I'd like to know how to overcome it?

I should add, I've already checked the Customer Permissions

[Alex van Vucht (GLiNTECH) · Accepted solution]

New users other than the Requestor can't be created directly on an anonymous service desk request form. You should create a new Text field called Approver Email then use a "Add a new Customer" action.

Tip: Add a new self-looping 'Change Approvers' transition to your Waiting for Approval status so that you can trigger sending out "A request is waiting for your approval" emails when you change Approvers.

So add the Approver Email field to your form, make it required, then make an automation like:

1. When value changes for Approver Email
2. If Approvers are empty and Approver Email is not empty
3. Edit issue: Approvers: {{issue.Approver Email}}
4. Re-fetch issue data
5. If/else block:
   1. If: Approvers are empty
   2. Add a new Customer: {{issue.Approver Email}}
   3. Re-fetch issue data
   4. Edit issue: Approvers: {{issue.Approver Email}}
   5. Re-fetch issue data
6. If/else block:
   1. If: Approvers are empty
   2. Add customer comment: "We could not request approval for {{issue.Approver Email}}. Please provide an email address."
   3. Else:
   4. Transition issue: Self-looping transition

This will try to find an existing account for an Approver first.

This is untested; there will be frequent 'errors' because text fields can't be checked that they're valid email addresses. It should work most of the time. 

[Anthony R]

Perfect thanks @Alex van Vucht (GLiNTECH) 

[Krzysztof Bogdan]

I am a developer of Approval Path for Jira.

Approval Path for Jira is an app for Jira Cloud. It is available on Atlassian Marketplace. Our plugin does support having external approvers. You just have to create step with external user email and it ready to be setup.