Documentation

Signoff for Jira

What it does

Signoff puts a validator on a workflow transition. Until the approvals the rule asks for are collected, the transition does not go through. Every signature is stored together with a fingerprint of the issue fields the rule watches, so a later edit to one of those fields makes the approval stale and closes the transition again.

Setting up a rule

Project settings → Workflows → edit the workflow → select the transition you want to guard.
Validators → Add validator → Approval required (Signoff).
Add approvers. Each one is a user, a group or a project role, and they are grouped into steps: step 2 does not start until step 1 is complete.
Optionally pick the fields to watch. Leaving this empty is the sensible default — most teams want the fact of an approval, not a strict binding to the data.
Save, then publish the workflow. An unpublished draft changes nothing.

A project role is the least reliable of the three. Roles belong to projects, and the picker lists roles from every project on the site, so it is possible to choose a role that does not exist in the project the workflow runs in — and then nobody can sign. Users and groups have no such trap.

Approving an issue

Open the issue and look for the apps button next to the “+”, under the issue title. The approval panel is in that list — it is not shown by default and it is not in the “+” menu. The panel says what is still missing and gives the buttons to approve or reject.

A rejection outweighs any number of approvals and requires a comment. A refusal without a reason tells nobody what to fix, so the app will not accept one.

The console

Apps → Approvals. Two tabs:

Waiting for me — everything that is waiting on you personally, longest wait at the top, with the reason (missing signature, or an approval that went stale).
Auditor log — a CSV export of decisions and transition attempts interleaved in time order, for any period. Rejections are exported next to approvals: “nobody bypassed the approval” is proven by the refusals, not by their absence.

Reminders

Once a day the app comments on issues whose approval has been waiting too long, mentioning only the people actually being waited on. No more often than once every three days per issue. It is the only thing the app ever writes to Jira.

Without an active subscription

Signing stops. Everything already recorded stays readable and exportable, and the validator lets transitions through rather than blocking them — a lapsed card should never hold up someone's release.

Something missing here?

Write to support@avakode.com. Questions that arrive twice get added to this page.