Service Desk Portal \ Approvals: How to limit approval drop down to certain users?

[James Godbold]

I need to be able to restrict the approvals field in the portal to only show authorized people who can approve tickets.

Currently a user could raise a ticket and select anyone for authorization rather than their line manager.

I can see how to filter the list when it's hidden but this doesn't help as we have regional managers who look after their areas. 

[James Godbold]

Create a custom field which is a User Picker (Single User)

When configuring it, there is an option to "User Filtering" I locked this to a group.

I had already created a new Role within the project and associated the users I wanted with the role. 

[Pierce Radtke]

@James Godbold - I have setup the approvals as you have specified creating a Project Role and then assigning users to that role.

My problem is stemming from the approvers list not creating a drop down user selection in the Customer Portal.  Also I was hoping the user picker would provide a preset list of users rather than an email only search confirmation.  Is there a better way to do this now?

I am hoping to have a preset dropdown list of managers w/ name and email so the portal only user can select which one to submit the approval to.

[Bruce Reed]

One problem with this scheme is that it appears the built-in notification for approval will only send notification to people in the Approvers field.  We tried exactly what you have with a project and found that the approver was not receiving an approval email. Opened a case with Atlassian and the rep said "The only supported notification for Approvers is using the supplied Approvers field." 

Using this knowledge I tried to switch back to the multi-user-picker Approvers field, but realized you cannot set a filter on that. Instead, I'm going to keep my single user approvers field and copy the value in it to the hidden Approvers field in a post function. Not certain that will work to trigger the notification, but I'll report back if it does.

[Pierce Radtke]

@Bruce Reed - We have not run into any issues when using the "single user picker" configured for "user filtering" + a Project Role (this bit was in the comments).  All licensed, unlicensed, and portal only approvers receive their email notifications when they are selected both from our Portal Submission form and from within the Jira program. 

I do not know when you spoke to Atlassian but the response sounds like an "out of demarcation" line customer service agents are trained to use when the problem doesnt fit into a tidy documented box.

** NOTE ** Atlassian does not have a method of using your "filtered" list of approvers to populate as a drop down to your users. 

-- If you have issues with the "single user picker" not working correctly for portal only accounts check the following setting: Project > Settings > Customer Permissions > Who can customers share requests with?
The "Any customer or organization, by searching this project.  choose this option to allow customers to search their organization for approvers" must be selected.  If it is not the user picker for portal only accounts will require the exact email address for the user to be entered with out any auto complete or confirmation that the address is correct.

[Bruce Reed]

Pierce,

Agree, and to date Atlassian has still not been able to figure out what's going on. We seem to be in circular information gathering mode, which will of course lead to nowhere. Doesn't seem to matter whether "Approvers" or our custom field is used -- it never sends notification. 

[Roberto Vargas]

hi @Bruce Reed did you solution of copying the picker of single user information on to the approvers field work?

Im facing the same problem as you.

[Bruce Reed]

I'm afraid not. It is using my single user picker approver field for the approval workflow. It works for the most part, but the odd thing is that I don't receive an approval notification, yet the other person who get approval notices does if he is selected. I tried working around it by using a Create postfunction that copied the single user picker value to the standard multi-user approvers field and using that for approval, but the behavior was no different. 

[Roberto Vargas]

What a shame.

[Jason Smallwood]

Hello @James Godbold I'm attempting to do the same has you have described, but not sure if things have changed since your post, but I am unsure on how to Lock the Single User drop down to a Project Role. Could you provide some details?

Thanks,

Jason

[James Godbold]

I worked it out myself.

• Created a Project Role called Approvers and added line managers to this group
• Created a custom field, Single User drop down and locked this down to the Project Role.
• amended workflows and screens to use this custom field.

Tested and works as expected

Do not use Groups as 'Portal Only' Users are not allowed to be added to Group.

[Jens Rosemann]

Hello @James Godbold

resurrecting this old topic:

Will the approvers in your case need a Jira Service Desk license or can you still use users without a license? 

Thanks,
Jens

[James Godbold]

the approvers do not need a services desk license.

I think since posting the process may have become more robust and this work around is no longer needed.