Auto-notify blocker assignees when tickets are open > 3 month

[Timi Falusi]

I'm looking to improve visibility on tickets with long-standing blockers.

Scenario:

• Parent tickets remain open 3+ months because they have linked blocker tickets
• Need to proactively notify the blocker assignee

Goal: Create an automation that comments on the parent ticket mentioning the blocker assignee, like:

"@Adam Bob - ABC-123 is blocking this ticket and has been open for 90+ days"

Questions:

1. Can I query linked issues (specifically "is blocked by" link type) in an automation trigger?
2. Can automation mention/tag the blocker's assignee in the comment?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Timi Falusi 

Yes, and Yes.

If you can formulate a JQL statement that would retrieve the desired issues you can use that in a rule. 

You can use the linkedWorkItems() JQL function.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/jql-functions/#linkedWorkItems--

The exact structure of the rule would take some additional exploration of your use case, as you want to look for Epics that meet your criteria, but also pull data from a subset of issues linked to those Epics.

And, it is possible to mention a user in a comment. You may have to take some extra steps to get the assignee of the linked issue.

A question I would have for you is how will you know that the blocked issue has been open for 90+ days specifically because of the blocking issue?

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Timi Falusi 

First thing, what do you mean by "has been open for 90+ days"?  For example, perhaps work items which are in progress that long?

If you started with the blocked items, ignoring the parent, you could use JQL to find them:

project = myProject
 AND workItemLinkType = blocks
 AND statusCategory = "In Progress"
 AND NOT status CHANGED AFTER -90d
 ORDER BY Key ASC

A check to only note items with an Assignee and Parent work item could be added to the JQL, as needed.

If this was used with the Lookup Work Items action, the distinct parent's could be found, and then a single comment with mentions added to it for the linked, blocking work items and their assignees using an advanced branch over the parent keys.

Kind regards,
Bill