Our approval workflow on requirement stories in Jira 8 is supposed to go through three stages: Technical Review → Business Review → Final Approval. Each transition has validators that check if linked defects are resolved before allowing the approval to proceed.
The problem is that requirements are getting stuck at the Technical Review stage. The validator seems to fail intermittently even when all linked defects are closed. I suspect it’s related to how the validator queries linked issues:
issue in linkedIssues({{issue.key}}, "is blocked by")
AND issuetype = Bug AND status != Closed
Sometimes this returns no results (correct), but other times it returns defects that were already closed days ago. This is delaying release approvals and causing confusion with stakeholders. Anyone dealt with workflow validators that reference linked defects in Jira 8?
Thanks Jen. I triggered a background reindex last night and it did clear some of the stuck requirements. But this morning we have three more stuck on the same validator. Is there a way to make the validator more resilient, or do we need to reindex regularly? That seems like a workaround rather than a real fix.
Nina, I checked and the links are definitely created from the defect side (defect “blocks” requirement), so the “is blocked by” direction should be correct. I don’t have ScriptRunner available, so I’m stuck with native validators. Is there any other way to make this more reliable in Jira 8 without adding plugins?
This sounds like a reindexing issue. Jira 8 sometimes has stale index data, especially with issue links. When you close a defect, the link index might not update immediately, so validators that rely on JQL can see outdated link states. Try forcing a reindex from Admin → System → Indexing and see if that clears up the stuck requirements.