What's new in Playbooks and Automation - May 2026

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May was a big month for Playbooks and Automation in Jira Service Management. We're shipping five updates — from AI that writes your Playbooks for you, to richer step content with images and files, to a cleaner Actions Menu that just makes sense. Whether you're running incident response, managing service requests, or building complex automation flows, there's something here for every team.

Here's everything that's new:

• 🤖 Create with Rovo — AI-assisted Playbook generation from prompts and your existing runbooks, SOPs, knowledge articles in Confluence

• AI-generated summaries — instant Playbook overviews so responders always know what they're working with instead of having to go through all the playbook steps

• 🖼️ Images and files in Playbook steps — attach screenshots, diagrams, and resources attachments directly to steps

• Cleaner Actions Menu — Playbook automation rules now live in their own section, away from the noise

• Smart Values in Loop — dynamic loop conditions that react to results generated within automation loop bodies

Let's dig in!

Create Playbooks faster with Rovo

Staring at a blank Playbook editor is a thing of the past. With Create with Rovo, you describe the process you want to document — or add link to your existing runbooks, SOPs on Confluence knowledge base articles — and get a structured, ready-to-refine first draft in seconds.

This is a game-changer for teams that know they need Playbooks but haven't had the bandwidth to build them. Common use cases include:

• Incident triage and escalation procedures
• Major incident communications
• IT Service request handling
• On-call investigation flows
• Change Management workflows

What you get

• Less time drafting — go from idea to structured Playbook quickly
• Convert your existing documentation into Playbooks — bring your existing runbooks and knowledge into a consistent, actionable format.
• Faster rollout — spin up Playbooks for new teams or new use cases without the bottleneck

Availability: OPEN BETA

No opt-in required for Premium and Enterprise Jira Service Management customers. Rovo must be enabled on your Jira Service Management site.

AI-generated Playbook summaries

Ever opened a Playbook mid-incident and had to skim 12 steps just to figure out if it's the right one? Those days are over.

AI-generated summaries give every Playbook an instant, plain-language overview — what it's for, what it covers, and when to use it. No more hunting through steps to get context.

This makes a real difference when:

• A responder is choosing between Playbooks during a live incident and needs to decide fast
• A new team member is getting up to speed on operational processes
• A stakeholder or approver needs to understand scope at a glance
• Teams are managing large Playbook libraries and need better discoverability

Availability: OPEN BETA. 

No opt-in required for Premium and Enterprise Jira Service Management customers. Rovo must be enabled on your Jira Service Management site.

Images and files in Playbook steps

This one's been a long time coming. Playbook steps now support images and file attachments. That means you can embed everything an executor needs — right in the step itself — without sending them on a treasure hunt through Confluence or Slack.

Think about what you can now attach directly to a step:

• Architecture diagrams — so responders understand the system before they touch it
• Screenshots and annotated UI walkthroughs — perfect for step-by-step procedural tasks
• SOPs and runbook PDFs — attach the full document, not just a link that might break
• Decision trees and flowcharts — help responders navigate complex branching logic
• Resources attachments — anything the responder needs to complete the action 

Availability: GENERALLY AVAILABLE for Premium and Enterprise Jira Service Management customers

Cleaner Actions Menu — Playbook rules, where they belong

If you use both Playbooks and Automation in Jira Service Management, you've probably noticed the Actions Menu can get crowded. Automation rules created as part of Playbooks were mixed in with all your other rules — making it hard to know at a glance which rules are Playbook-specific and which are general-purpose.

We've fixed that. Automation rules that are part of Playbooks and that a user has access to are now filtered into their own dedicated section in the Actions Menu.

Why this matters:

• No more confusion — Playbook rules and standalone automation rules are clearly separated

• Cleaner menus — teams with large rule sets no longer have to scroll past irrelevant rules

• Faster action selection — responders and agents can find the right rule in the right context, immediately

It's a small change that makes a big difference if you're running Playbooks at scale across multiple teams or workflows.

Availability: GENERALLY AVAILABLE for Premium and Enterprise Jira Service Management customers

Smart Values in Loop: Automation that adapts in real time

For the automation power users: Smart Values in Loop is here, and it changes what's possible with loop-based automation in JSM.

What's new

The Loop component now supports dynamic loop inputs - Smart values from rule groups executed before the loop, or within the loop body itself.

Previously, loop conditions could only evaluate the trigger context. Now, loop conditions can react to results generated during each iteration — making your automations genuinely adaptive without manual intervention or hard-coded workarounds.

Real-world example

You want to call an external API inside a loop, retrying until you get a successful 2XX response. With Smart Values in Loop:

1. Define the HTTP response status code as a loop input variable in the add/initialise inputs section (image 1); Update this variable in rule group output with the status in the web request response (image 2)
2. Set the loop condition to evaluate that output variable before each iteration
3. The loop automatically stops once a 2XX is returned — no hard-coded retry limits, no workarounds

This is exactly the kind of dynamic, condition-aware automation that makes complex service workflows tractable at scale.

We'd love to hear from you

Five features, one release — and we're just getting started. We'd love to know how you're planning to use these in your teams:

• Smart Values in Loop — what automation workflows are you unlocking with dynamic loop conditions?
• Create with Rovo — what existing runbooks or SOPs are you most excited to convert into Playbooks?
• Actions Menu — has the crowded menu been a pain point for you? We'd love to hear how this change lands.
• Images in Playbook steps — what visuals would make your steps more useful? Diagrams? Screenshots? Something else?

Drop your thoughts, use cases, and questions in the comments below. The team reads every reply — and your feedback directly shapes what we build next. 👇

Questions or Feedback for us?

If you have any feedback on certain features or enhancements you'd like to see, feel free to submit a JAC ticket and vote for existing requests. If you want to have a detailed feedback session with the team, please book some time based on your availability using this link: https://calendly.com/makarandgomashe/playbooks-in-jsm

[Daniel Santiago]

I wish the playbook automations would only show up inside the playbooks, instead of appearing in the actions menu. This "Cleaner Actions Menu" doesn't really reduce crowding.