Adding transition from one status to 'any other status' in the workflow

[Daria Liashenko]

In my current workflow, there are two statuses, namely "on hold" and "re-open," which can be accessed from any other status. However, one cannot transition from these two statuses to any other status.

Is there a smart way to do the transition from those two back to any other status - without needing to set a transition from each one to all other statuses?

Thanks! 

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @Daria Liashenko and welcome to the Community!

No, not really I'm afraid. If you need to get from "a status" back into any other status, there's only 2 possible ways to set this up:

• either any other status has allows global transitions from any other status. You might then add conditions to that transition to apply limitations on the statuses in your workflow that can use this transition.
• or you need to provide direct transition from your status to all the other status you want them to use.

Your use case is a textbook example of why I usually advise not to use an on hold status in your workflow, but rather let people add a flag to blocked issues. That is possible by clicking on the ... button on an issue card in your board and selecting the "Add flag" option. That way, issues are identified as blocked, but they remain in their active status, so you always now where in the process they got blocked and avoid the complexity you describe.

For you reopen scenario I would also suggest a different approach. Reopen is something you would only expect to be necessary for closed issues. So you may want to restrict the number of statuses that let you go to that reopen status in the first place and - again - thus reduce the number of options needed to move forward again from that status.

Hope this helps!

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Daria Liashenko 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

If you want to restrict the transitions that can go to those other status, then you will have to add a transition from On Hold and Re-open to each of those other statuses.

If you want to allow an issue in any status to transition to all those other statuses, then you just need to have a Global Transition into each of those other statuses.

[Daria Liashenko]

Here is my Workflow: how can I set the transition from on hold/re-open to any other status - without needing to set a transition from them to all other statuses one by one? 

[Walter Buggenhout]

You can't. As both @Trudy Claspill and I explained, you need an outgoing transition into any status you want to be able to transition to. So: either every status in your workflow needs to have an All > status transition or you need individual transitions to each status. Have a look at the suggestion I made as well to take a different approach to your problem.

[Trudy Claspill]

One can set up an incoming global transition that says "you can transition from any status to this status", as you have done with the Reopen and On Hold statuses.

There is no option to set up an outgoing global transition that says "you can transition from this status to any other status".

With your workflow, to maintain the restrictions you currently have on transitions to those other statuses, your only option is to set a transition from Reopen and On Hold to each other status individually.

[Daria Liashenko]

Thank you @Walter Buggenhout and @Trudy Claspill, I will give your suggestions a try.