Redmine

Hello, I strongly disagree.
Having the possibility to change status to the same status allows
for the following:

Issue #132 is in "open" status and is assigned to Bendt.
Berndt investigates the issue and finds that it should better
be done by Romeo. Berndt has no "edit issue" privileges
- so he changes the status to "open" (same state),
assigns it to Romeo and writes a little comment.

Why not give him "edit" privileges? Well, if you just
edit an issue, this change won't be remembered in the journal
(=history) of the issue. The edit feature is still useful, but
as an admin feature, not as a common workflow feature.

At least, this is how I understand it...

muro

I see what you're saying. I definitely agree that the
functionality you describe needs to be available. But it
seems a bit awkward to accomplish that by changing the status.

I use JIRA primarily at work. JIRA allows the functionality
you describe by allowing people to comment on an issue. This
doesn't involve changing the status at all.

So, I guess this is more of a design question. How should
people be allowed to comment on issues? Should it happen
strictly by changing the status? Or should it be a separate
kind of thing?

Yes, I agree - it is a bit awkward. I got used to it, but it
might not be the best way.

Anyway - if you want just to add a note, you can do that without
changing the status. But if you want to change who the issue
is assigned to, only then you must change the status.
I am also not certain, if it is better to have a separate action
(change assignment) - it also makes the interface clunkier.

You're right.
- Currently, the same status as the current issue status is added
in the list (forced). I propose to remove this rule and let the
user define this behaviour through the workflow screen (un-disable
the checkboxes on the "diagonal", eg. Closed/Closed
can be check or not).
- I'll add a "Assign" permission that will allow a
user to set/change the assignement without changing the status.

That sounds great. If you want to go one step further you
could put two links up there. One called "Assign" to
assign
it to anyone, and another called "Assign to me" as a
convenient way to claim issues. JIRA has this feature and I
use it at least a couple times a week.

Assignee can be changed from the issue list using the context
menu (right click on the issue row).