Bulk Changes and approval by Project lead/owner

[John Bradley]

Hello - I'm not sure if there is any way to do this, but here goes...

I'm a Jira Admin, but not an expert Jira Admin - I occasionally would like to make bulk changes to issues, but I would like to somehow haver it so that the project lead for the issues I am making the bulk change on has to approve it.  Is there a way to do this or as an admin it should be assumed that I already notified the project lead and should know what I'm doing.

[Ashish Bijlwan · Accepted solution]

Hi @John Bradley 

Currently, Jira Cloud does not have a built-in feature to directly require project lead approval for bulk changes. However, there is an workaround you could consider to achieve a similar outcome:

1. Implement a workflow that has Approved as status and can be transitioned only by the Project Lead (this can be achieved by the Workflow Condition)

Then you can do bulk changes to all the issues that has status as Approved.

2. Add a custom field for approval status (e.g., "Bulk Change Approval")
Then do the bulk changes to all the issues that has "Bulk Change Approval" field as Approved.

Regards,
Ashish

[John Bradley]

Thank You Ashish - I think this workaround is good enough for what I want to accomplish, which is to make sure I'm not performing any massive changes before having the Project Lead know about it approve it.

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @John Bradley,

There is no approval mechanism for bulk changes. Once you start doing a bulk change, Jira's bulk change wizard will guide you step by step through the changes and will ask you for confirmation before you hit and run. 

You cannot ask a system approval (I mean, use an approval process in the tool) to involve someone else. You need to kickstart the bulk change and once it starts, it can't be stopped anymore.

If it makes you feel more comfortable, you can always check in with your project lead when the wizard asks you for confirmation, but will need to go through different channels than inside the tool.

Hope this helps! 

[John Bradley]

Thank you Walter - I think knowing that there is nothing built in to Jira is helpful, and using the suggestion from Ashish is probably a decent workaround.