Work Item Rules Workaround: Only the creator of the bug can close the bug

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In our last post in this series, Sunder blogged about saving the resolved reason. (You’ve probably figured out that we have “tag-teamed” this blog series). So anyway, here is the next item in the series.  Customers have asked us:

“I only want the creator of the bug to be able to close the bug … no one else”

“Oh … and by the way, I want to be able to have an administrator override and close a bug for anyone”

Another valid request, again which is not handled well with standard implementations of work item rules. In fact, Sunder and I tried and tried to figure this one out, and simply couldn’t come up with a solution.

Then I offered a $5 reward to a developer who said he could figure it out. Well I’m out $5, but now have something to offer to solve this problem. Worth the $5? You can be the judge…

 

Here are the steps:

1) Create ClosedByValidation field and add the following rules:

<FIELD name="Closed By Validation" refname="Demo.ClosedByValidation" type="String">
<COPY from="currentuser" />
<FROZEN not=“[project]\Project Administrators”/> </FIELD>

 

2) Add the following rules to Closed state

<STATE value="Closed">
<FIELDS>
<FIELD refname="Demo.ClosedByValidation">
<COPY from="currentuser" />
</FIELD>
</FIELDS> </STATE>

3) Add the ClosedByValidation field to the form, so it looks like this. Note how I’ve displayed both the “Created By” field and the “ClosedByValidation” field.

image

 

How it works:

  • The ClosedByValidation field copies the “Created By” value into itself right when the work item is created.
  • It then immediately freezes the field (with the FROZEN) rule, which states that it cannot change.
    • NOTE: The FROZEN rule is conditioned to NOT apply to project administrators, giving them an override capability.
  • When the work item is Closed, then the current user is copied into the ClosedByValidation field.
  • If the ClosedByValidation’s value remains the same (the original Created By) then all is well.
  • If the ClosedByValidation’s value has changed, then the FROZEN rule displays a violation as you see in the screenshot above.

Pretty clever Mr. Developer.

image