JIRA workflow validator problem "required field'

[George Worthington]

I've encountered an issue with JIRA validator's not working properly - I have setup transitions that have a validator of 'Field Required' = 'Comment' for status changes. Pretty standard setup for defect status transitions. The problem is that now I can't change the status of defects any longer because comments aren't actually being recognized so I just recieve the error that a comment is required. It doesn't matter if I add a comment before attempting the status transtion or at the same time. Could someone explain to me how to get this to work properly? I can't believe this could be working as designed?!

[Peter Van de Voorde · Accepted solution]

George,

This isn't part of the standard Jira installation, it's part of the JIRA Suite Utilities.

You might create an issue about it here : https://jsutil.atlassian.net/browse/JSUTIL

You could also use the comment required validator that's part of this plugin : https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.innovalog.jmwe.jira-misc-workflow-extensions

It's also free and should help you out.

Best regards

Peter

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Edit - Ah, beat me to it, and put more detail than I'd just scribbled :-)

[George Worthington]

Thanks for the clarification gentlemen. This does seem to be a pretty standard requirement with workflow transitions for any defect tracking system and I'm pretty shocked it isn't standard out of the box functionality that is supported in JIRA.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It sort of is.

"Comment" is not actually a field, in the sense that the rest of the issue fields are, and it needs special coding to make it a "required field" because of that.

There is a "comment required" validator which you need to use instead of "field required" - unfortunately I can't remember if it's in the core of 5.x, Jira Suite Utilities, Jira Toolkit, or Misc Workflow extensions. Does work nicely though.

[George Worthington]

Thanks Nic, unfortunately there is no 'comment required' specific validator in JIRA 5.1. I just can't fathom why JIRA designers would populate 'comment' in the list of possible fields to make 'required' through a validator unless this would actually work. Another example of very poor design.

[Peter Van de Voorde]

George,

Might it be that you have a custom field called Comment?

That could cause confusion and might explain this problem.

best regards

Peter

[George Worthington]

I double-checked that on the off-chance another Project had created a "Comment" field, but that isn't the case. Here's the comment in the field parameter list: