Reassign the Last Developer

Owned by Daniel Barrow
Last updated: Sept 20, 2023
3 min read

Scenario

When an issue is reopened by a tester, it should be reassigned to the Developer who last worked on it.

Resolution

This requires that a Developer project role exist in your Jira instance; it can have any name, but it should be a project role that includes all members of the development team. Using the Developer project role, you can use the Assign to last role member post-function to automatically assign an issue to the member of the Developer role who last worked on the issue. Adding this post-function to the Reopen transition will fulfill the requirements.

Note: the steps below require your workflow has a status of Reopened (or something similar). Figure 1, below, shows the status Reopened with an incoming transition from Done and and outgoing transition to In Progress. Your transitions do not need to match, but you will need a status that represents reopening an issue after it has been closed.

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Steps to Create

1. Project role for Developers

Verify that your Jira instance has a project role that includes the necessary developers. If that role does not exist, create one and add any necessary team members; see this page for more information: Manage project roles | Atlassian Support.

2. Add Assign to last role member post-function

  1. Log in to your Jira instance as an Administrator.

  2. In the upper right corner of the window, click Settings ( ) and select Issues.

  3. In the left-hand sidebar, click Workflows.

  4. From the list of Workflows, click Actions ( ) for the appropriate workflow and select Edit.

  5. Edit the transition:

    1. When viewing the Workflow in Diagram view (Figure 1, right), select the Transition and click the Post Functions link. Click Add post function at the top of the list of existing post functions.

    2. When viewing the Workflow in Text view, click the name of the Transition then select the Post Functions tab. Click Add post function at the top of the list of existing post functions.

    3. Select Assign issue (JMWE) from the list of post-functions and click Add.

Edit Transition to Add Post-function
Figure 1 - Edit Transition

3. Configure the post-function

Set the following configurations (Figure 2, right):

  1. Select user - Set to Last role member

    1. Set Role to the project role you created for your Development team, e.g. Developers.

  2. Set Assignment behavior as needed. See Assignment Behavior Options, below, for more information.

  3. Target issue(s) - Set Which issue(s) to Current Issue.

  4. Conditional execution - Set as needed.

  5. Error handling - Set as needed.

  6. Click Add.

Assignment Behavior Options

The configuration of Assignment Behavior, above, will depend on how the transition is triggered and which options are available to them during the transition. For example:

  • Always - If, during the transition, the user triggering the transition cannot update the Assignee, using the Always option will guarantee that the post-function will always trigger and update the Assignee.

  • If the transition user value is not changed - If, during the transition, the user triggering the transition can update the Assignee but they choose not to do so, or they forget to do so, the post-function will trigger and update the Assignee. This is an effective way of guaranteeing proper assignment while still enabling the option for manual reassignment.

  • If transition user value is NOT a member of the selected role - Depending on your workflow, if the user who was last assigned the issue is not a member of the Developers group (e.g. A QA user or Project Lead was last assigned the issue and closed it), you can override the Assignee with the last member of the Developers group that was assigned to the issue.

 

You’re done!

Now, when a closed issue is reopened it will automatically be reassigned to the last member of the Developers project role to which it was assigned.