Restricting a workflow status to only be able to go to 'In progress'
Asked by Spasimira Genova:

Hi community,

I've been going nuts with what seems to be a really basic task.

An internal team have requested that the following change is performed in their workflow:

They want the status 'Waiting for support' to only be able to transition to 'In progress'. Everything else should stay as it is.

When clicking around it seems like the configuration of this workflow is unusual. 'In progress' is mapped to the other grey statuses in a way I haven't seen in other workflows.

Additionally, when I go to the text view there is a step called 'Investigating' but no corresponding status with that name in the diagram view.

I've tried to just delete all transitions and map everything from scratch, but the workflow gets super cluttered as every status pretty much needs to have an outgoing and incoming transition with all other statuses, aside from Waiting for support.

Is there a neat and smart way to do this? Will everything work as expected if I delete the big 'In progress' transition and just create new transitions? Maybe I'm missing something and overly complicating things.

Many thanks!

![Screenshot 2024-09-02 at 15.47.56.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/345218i89594290BD7F815E/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 2024-09-02 at 15.47.56.png")![Screenshot 2024-09-02 at 15.48.15.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/345219iDA99F5B7CA532740/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 2024-09-02 at 15.48.15.png")


Answers:
author: Walter Buggenhout
body: Hi [@Spasimira Genova](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5468025),

No reason to go nuts ? - the problem is that (nearly) all statuses in your workflow have global transitions associated with them. These are the **ALL** boxes associated with every status.

Just starting from your requirement:
> They want the status 'Waiting for support' to only be able to transition to 'In progress'. Everything else should stay as it is.

You already have the direct transition from **Waiting for Support** to **In Progress** in place, but you would need to add a condition on every global transition in your workflow telling it that it should not be available from the *Waiting for Support*status.

To do so, click on the arrow that runs from the **ALL** box to a status, select *Conditions* from the dialog that appears and add a **Value Field** conditions. Set it up as indicated here:

![Screenshot 2024-09-03 at 16.34.02.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/345274i41C6E62FF241A00F/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 2024-09-03 at 16.34.02.png")

Repeat the same for every global transition to another status in your workflow. After doing so, publish the changes to your workflow and you will probably be fine.

If this was my Jira instance, I would probably sit down with the team using this workflow and - on a whiteboard - draw the desired transitions between all statuses from scratch to redesign it entirely. As I am not a big fan of global transitions, I would most likely try to eliminate the ones that are not necessary and can be replaced by direct transitions from one status into another.

Hope this helps!

comments: author: Spasimira Genova
body: Hi [@Walter Buggenhout](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/783225)

Thanks so much for your input!

I've suggested simplifying the workflow as per your recommendation, because I also think these global transitions are making things complicated but the team's requirements have not changes regardless.

I've tried implementing the steps you've described, but as suspected, there is something funky about this workflow that I don't get.

After adding the conditions, I'm still seeing these transitions as available.

'Resolved' and 'closed' are successfully restricted.

Do you have any idea why this could be happening?

![Screenshot 2024-09-04 at 14.41.28.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/345513i4C99B557555ECC0C/image-dimensions/238x197?v=v2 "Screenshot 2024-09-04 at 14.41.28.png")


Tags: cloud

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