Restrict Customers from Adding Comments using Workflow Properties

Summary

This article presents solutions for effectively managing customer comments within Jira Service Management (JSM) based on specific scenarios. It addresses the need to restrict customers from adding public comments either across an entire project or during particular workflow transitions.

Solution

Solutions

Here, we use Jira's native workflow properties feature, which you can read more about here: Workflow Properties

Scenario 1: Exclude Portal Customers from adding public comments:

If the requirement is to completely disable the ability for JSM Customers of a specific project to add comments, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Project Settings > Permissions.

2. Click on Actions > Edit Permissions.

3. Locate "Add Comments" and remove the permission for "Service Desk Customer - Portal Access."

4. This action ensures that customers cannot comment on any tickets within the project.

Scenario 2: Exclude Portal-only customers from adding comments at a particular transition:

If the requirement is to disable commenting only for portal customers during a specific transition, take these steps:

1. Go to Project Settings > Workflow (associated with the relevant request and issue types).

2. Edit the workflow and navigate to the Transition.

3. Access the Properties of the Transition.

4. Add the following:

   • Although there isn't a direct property to deny customers from commenting, you can specify which project roles are permitted to add comments.

   • Set the Property Key as "jira.permission.comment.projectrole.1".

   • Use the project role ID obtained from your JIRA instance's URL as the Property Value.

     • Navigate to https://<your_cloud_instance>.atlassian.net/secure/project/ViewProjectRoles.jspa.

     • Click on "View Usage" to retrieve the project role ID from the URL.

   • For instance, if users are allowed to comment belonging to the "Developers" project role, use the corresponding project role ID as the Property Value.

   • If including multiple roles, follow the pattern: "jira.permission.comment.projectrole.2" with your Project Key.

5. Publish the updated workflow to enforce the restriction effectively.

Ideally, in this case, we would disable the comments for the Service Desk Team Role and Administrator Role.

We will first identify the RoleID's as specified in Step 3 above, once we have them we can use them against the WorkFlow Properties as below

Scenario 3: Restrict all users from adding a comment at a particular transition:

To prevent customers and agents from commenting on tickets at a particular transition, follow these steps:

1. Go to Project Settings > Workflow (associated with the relevant request and issue types).

2. Edit the workflow and navigate to the Status.

3. Access the Properties of the Status.

4. Add the following:

   • Property Key: jira.permission.comment.denied

   • Property Value: true

5. Publish the updated workflow to enforce the restriction effectively.