Possible causes to error: "You don’t have permission to transition this issue/ticket"

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

Problem:


Sometimes, when we try to transition an issue, we get the following message: You don’t have permission to transition this issue". The purpose of this doc is to show possible causes and how to fix the described error.

This issue might happen due to either of the reasons below:


Root cause 1: User without permission to transition

In service projects, users are required to have a JSM license and the Service Project Agent's permission to perform an issue transition. For other types of projects, you need any Jira license. 

Solution: Grant them permission or grant a Product license and permissions for these users by following the steps below:

  1. Log in as a Jira admin > go to admin.atlassian.com > select your organization;

  2. From your organization, select Users > select a user > grant them a Jira Service Management license;

  3. Then go to project > Service project settings > People > Add people > add the user and grant them a role;

  4. Then open your project > Service project settings > Permissions(for company-managed projects);
  5. At the top of the page click on Actions > Click in Update the permission > mark the checkbox role > Click Update;

     



  • More details about permissions and grant agent permissions to licensed users in Team-managed projects can be found in the documents below:
    For Team-managed project permissions, you must follow this doc to understand how to configure project permissions.

  • Add or remove people from your team-managed service project to grant the agent permissions for licensed users.

Root cause 2: Status without outgoing transition

It’s important to note that, all transitions come from the workflow and it's customizable. So if you'd like to perform a transition, basically, the transition has to exist in the workflow.
Therefore, if the current status doesn’t have any outgoing transitions, you'll not be able to transition the tickets that are in this status. In this case, you will have to edit the workflow to add the proper transition:

Solution: Edit the workflow and add a transition between the statuses you want

For Team-managed projects:

  1. Open your project > Service project settings > Request types

  2. Choose the request type you want > Select Edit Workflow

  3. Add a transition from the current status to a status you want > Select Update workflow
    More details about workflows in Team-managed projects can be found in the document below:

For Company-managed projects:
As per our guides on the Work with issue workflows page, there are limitations when editing active workflows. One of these limitations is: "If a status has no outgoing transitions (Global transitions are not considered), it cannot have any new outgoing transitions added, regular or global".
Therefore, in this case, it's necessary to copy the existing workflow, make the necessary changes to the copied inactive workflow, and then assign this new edited workflow to the project. We have a detailed and illustrated step-by-step on how to do it in this community post:

How to edit a workflow when it shows "You cannot perform this operation on a draft workflow"

Root cause 3: Workflow status/transition with property making it impossible/restricting any group

Example:

Property Key = jira.issue.editable
Property Value = false

Solution:

  1. Open your project > Service project settings > Workflow;

  2. Click in Actions;

  3. Go to transition/status > Properties;

  4. Delete the property;

  5. Go back to the workflow scheme page > click in publish draft to save your progress.


Root cause 4: Workflow conditions allow only a specific group to perform transitions

Solution:

The permissions to execute the Workflow transitions are defined by Conditions. Due to an invalid condition, users cannot perform transitions.
Check if there is any condition defined on the relevant Workflow transition by following the steps below:

  1. Select Settings(at the top of your screen) > Issues.

  2. Click Workflows and then Edit for the relevant workflow.

  3. In diagram mode, select the transition arrow. In text mode, select the transition name from the Transitions (id) column.

  4. In diagram mode, click Conditions in the properties panel to show the triggers configured for the transition. In text mode, select the Conditions tab.


If none of the above causes, your workflow may be in an invalid state preventing the transition, so please contact Atlassian support.

Last modified on Jan 9, 2024

Was this helpful?

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