Introduction

Workflows are one standout feature that help users to transform JIRA into a user-friendly system. They help users to define a lifecycle for the issues, the purpose for which they are using JIRA, and so on. As the Atlassian documentation (http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Configuring+Workflow) says:

A JIRA workflow is the set of steps and transitions that an issue goes through during its lifecycle. Workflows typically represent business processes.

JIRA uses OpenSymphony's OSWorkflow, which is highly configurable and, more importantly, pluggable to cater for the various requirements. JIRA uses three different plugin modules to add extra functionalities into its workflow, which we will see in detail through this chapter.

To make things easier, JIRA ships with a default workflow. We can't modify the default workflow, but can copy it into a new workflow and amend it to suit our needs. Before we go into the development aspect of a workflow, it makes sense to understand the...