How to restrict the assignment of issues that are already assigned to someone


Platform Notice: Cloud - This article applies to Atlassian products on the cloud platform.

Scenario

You want Jira users to only be able to assign issues that are unassigned. Once an issue has been assigned to someone, only administrators can edit the assignee field.

Solution

Add a workflow property that restricts the 'Assign issues' permission to all workflow statuses, except for the initial one, and create an automation rule to transition issues once they're assigned. This way, users that have permission to assign issues will only be able to perform this action while issues are in the initial workflow status.

As explained on Use workflow properties, you can restrict specific permissions to users, groups, or project roles. In this case, we will restrict the Assign issues permission only to members of the Administrators group.

You will need to add the following property to all statuses of the workflow except for the initial one:

Property Key:

jira.permission.assign.group

Property Value:

administrators

To add this property to your workflow:

  1. Go to the relevant project > Project settings > Workflows
  2. Click on 'Edit' (pencil icon) next to the workflow you want to edit
  3. Click on each status (except for the initial) and select Properties
  4. Add the Property Key and Property Value
  5. Publish your workflow to save your changes.

To create an automation rule to change the status of issues when assigned:

  1. Go to the relevant project > Project settings > Automation > Create rule
  2. Select the Issue assigned trigger
  3. Select the Transition issue action and choose the destination status (make sure there is an existing transition between the initial and the destination statuses).

It's done! Now whenever an issue is assigned, it will be automatically transitioned to the next workflow status and it won't be possible for users that are not members of the Administrators group to change the assignee.

Last modified on Sep 21, 2022

Was this helpful?

Yes
No
Provide feedback about this article
Powered by Confluence and Scroll Viewport.