How to prevent customers from escalating tickets before a certain timeframe in Jira Service Management Cloud

Summary

There are times when customers create a ticket and immediately escalate it, hence the admins need a way to only allow customers to escalate a ticket after a certain time has passed since ticket creation.

Environment

Jira Service Management - Cloud

Solution

There is currently no direct way to hide the status based on time constraints, however, it can be achieved using native Atlassian functionalities as follows.

1. SLA Creation:

Create a new SLA like Open to Escalate option and set the Time target to 24 hours or the any time period you choose for the escalate option to become available.

Conditions: Start counting when: Issue Created Finish counting when: Comment: For customers 

2.  Custom Field creation:  Create a new custom field say Allow Escalation with type Select List(single choice) with one option Yes. For more information on adding custom field options please refer this support documentation.

3.  Associate custom field to the relevant screens:  Ensure that the above field is added to the View and Edit screens of the relevant issue types for which the associated tickets would be created.

4.  Automation: Create a new automation to trigger when the SLA Open to Escalate option breaches.

Perform action to update the value of the custom Allow Escalation field to Yes.

5.  Workflow Condition:

Add a Workflow condition for the transition to "Escalated" only be possible when the value of the custom field Allow Escalation is set as Yes.

Finally, make sure to follow the steps to Show a workflow transition in the portal so customers can perform the Escalate transition after the configured time.