You asked, we care, we listen and now we deliver! The time has come yet again for a new feature! A feature YOU asked for! If you are using the Approval Path, you have likely considered this feature at some point in your experience. Why can’t I just run multiple paths instead of only one?🤔 Well, that is no longer the case! What is Approval Path and why it matter?
Jira is one of the most popular issue tracking and project management software. When released in 2002, it was designed as an issue tracking platform for software developers. It has become more popular, so Atlassian expanded the Jira platform and gave users a choice between Jira Software, Jira Work Management and Jira Service Management. Each product is targeted at a different group. Jira Work Management is aimed at non-technical teams. Jira Software is designed for software teams: developers, QA, scrum masters, project managers, etc.
One small update for Approval Path, one giant leap for automation. When it comes to the Approval Path there are really two ways the approval can finalize, approved or rejected, sometimes however that may not be the final, whether someone mistakenly approved or rejected the path or had a change of heart after submission, there are times we just need to hit the reset button! Here at Warsaw Dynamics, we figured having this feature work with API could really give a ton of additional flexibility when it comes to managing your approvals; hence the new update!
We have a new and rather EXITING update!!! (on both Jira and Confluence) We’ve been working around the concept of approval path for quite some time, if you are a user of Approval Path, you probably work in an environment where permission hierarchies play a role, hence the need of approvals! So, what’s the update and how can it improve your experience!?! Permission schemes That’s right!!! You can now limit or extend the access of users to approval path capabilities, you can create more flexibility around the approval path by allowing more users to interact with the path or you may wish to limit access restrictions further to have a more focused group of users handle the approvals.
Usually, an approval process takes place within the organisation. However, in some cases, a decision from someone outside your Jira or Confluence is needed. There is no point in adding this user to your instance when there is an easier and faster solution provided by the Approval Path apps, which is the email step. All you need is a decisive person’s email address, on which will be sent a call for action message.
We are constantly developing our apps to make them more useful. Lately, we added some improvements to the Approval Path for Jira and the Approval Path for Confluence. Let’s walk through some of them. Parallel group In response to customer requests, we added the parallel group to both the Approval Path for Jira and the Approval Path for Confluence. It allows all users added to the group to approve or reject parallelly.
With the growth of the company, comes a moment when standardization of the approval process becomes necessary. It could be a moment, when different people are responsible for the decision and realisation, or when reaching each approver becomes too time-consuming. The approval process can be carried out in an outdated way - with emails, PDFs, Word documents, or at worst, on paper… But luckily we can use approval management apps like Approval Path for Jira and Approval Path for Confluence to improve the process.
Jira’s only built-in functionality to set up an approval process is in the Jira Service Management. Approvals in Jira Service Management are associated with the workflow. While this is useful, it also creates some limitations. In this article, we will look into the differences between the approval processes in the Approval Path and in the Jira Service Management Approval Path Jira Project types Any kind of project Jira Service Management Number of steps As many as needed One approval - one step Step types User, Group, Issue Field- User, Issue Field- Group, Email, Webhook User, Group Approval definitions ✔ ✘ Path visualisation Clear, legible Illegible Project types The Approval Path app allows you to run the approval in any type of issue in any type of project, unlike Jira’s native approval process which can be used only in Jira Service Management, only in issues that have approval added to a workflow.
Approvals in Jira have become as necessary as workflows and boards. This is thanks to increasing adoption among business teams like HR, operations, legal, and procurement, for whom approvals are an everyday function. And yet, there is no native functionality for approval management in Jira itself (apart from in Jira Service Management, and it’s not very good). This is why we have built Approval Path for Jira, an app that lets you create as many project-specific templates for approving a piece of work as you like.
Approval management is the missing piece of the Jira toolset Approval Path for Jira Native Jira’s only approval management functionality is in Jira Service Management (JSM), and we’re being kind when we say it’s, urm, not the best. In Jira Software and Jira Work Management (JWM), a workaround is your only option for getting a process, proposal, or purchase approved within Jira. And yet, it’s something users are frequently asking for help with on the Atlassian community, specifically, how to add an approval step to a Jira Software or JWM project.