How can an attribute value on an object be set as an object from an outbound referenced object?

[Nadine Schuett]

Hello Atlassian community 

I am trying to get my head around assets and have set up the following objects in one scheme: 

• Company
  • Team
• Country

Company has an outbound reference attribute to Country and Team has an outbound reference attribute Company. What I want now is for the attribute Country for object Team to be filled automatically by the Country value on the Company referenced in the Team's attribute. 

Initially, I thought that this might be possible by setting an AQL filter or value reference but then I found no documentation for that and testing with AQL did not lead to the required result.

Next I tried Assets automation, which looked promising but setting the value to {{object.Company.Country}} as suggested by various sources does not work so this drives me really mental ;-) 

Error when updating object: - rlabs-insight-attribute-40306: At least one value must be set;

I checked cardinality, which does not suggest a value is even required so the error message does not help to investigate further. 

Can anyone help me understand I do wrong? 

Many thanks 

Nadine 

[Stefan Stadler · Accepted solution]

Hi @Nadine Schuett 

from what you describe, I really think the information in the Team is redundant. There should be a way of getting the information using AQL and therefore - if the data should not be displayed in Asset Custom Fields in Jira - referencing this via AQL should be the easiest solution here.

You may have a look here and check the heading "Dot notation": Using Assets Query Language (AQL) syntax | Assets | Atlassian Support

Without the option to try, I guess the AQL would look similar to this: 

objectType = Team WHERE Company.Country = <Value of your choice>

If you need to display this information in Jira Asset Custom Fields in Issue details, you have two options in my opinion:

A) Try to add the value by automations into your Team object. This will then cause redundant data, but can directly be displayed in Issue Views.

B) Use two Asset Custom Fields (one for Team and one for Company) and use Jira Automation or ScriptRunner to fill the Company field based on the selected value in Team field. That way you could even search using JQL. 

Btw: Did you try to add the value to a text field or something like that for debugging? I am not sure if the smart values are working as intended, but I also currently do not have an Asset environment available for testing.

Hope this helps.

Stefan

[Nadine Schuett]

Hello @Stefan Stadler 

Thanks a lot for your input. 

I have actually not yet made up my mind on whether I like the redundancy argument killing my approach since visualization of the Country attribute in the Team object in some form still seems helpful to me considering how complex it can all get...

For the automation rule, I tried variations of the attribute format and also had it updated it in text attributes but the best I got was the Company when I used the placeholder format ${Country} - no chance to get the Country attribute. 

However, I have tested the AQL approach and it actually works: 

objectType = Team and Company.Country = Germany

I need to revisit this post and read your thoughts on custom fields when I get there (if I even ever make it...;-))

Cheers 

Nadine 

[MF · Accepted solution]

Hi Nadine,

can you explain the desired workflow/the requirement to understand this better?

Best regards

[MF]

Note: just tried this, and it worked.

Company: "Company-A"."Country-A"

Country: "Country-A"

New Team Object: "Team-A" fill with Company Attribute with "Company-A" and create Object -> Automation "copys" the value from Company.Country to Team.Country

[Nadine Schuett]

Hello @MF 

Thanks a lot for your quick response.

What I ultimately try to achieve is objects showing attributes of referenced objects and this Country-Company-Team scenario is just some basic scenario for testing purposes and understanding ways of doing things. 

With regards to my scenario, I have Country, Company and Team objects in the same scheme. The Company object has an object attribute referencing the Country object and the Team object has an object attribute referencing the Company object. The Team object also has a Country attribute, which I want to get filled automatically with the Country attribute value of the Company object that is linked to the Team. Ultimately, I might then want to filter for all Team objects in a specific country. 

Maybe I am on an entirely wrong path and setting the Country attribute on the Team object is redundant since I could do my search with AQL?

Anyways, I tried your approach in Assets automation and it gave me the same error message as before. 

This is what my automation looks like?   

Any more ideas? 

[MF]

Yes, it seems redundant, but sometimes workarounds, need vehicles.

Are you on Datacenter?

In Cloud: As mentoined above: I´ve setup an automation, which looks like yours and it works.

I´cant see the automation in the Assets/Scheme Configuration and have to setup the automation in the global Automation settings.

[Nadine Schuett]

Yes, unfortunately we are still on Data Center so I guess this is why your approach does not work ;-( 

[MF]

Ok, because of lack of knowledge I´m not able to provide more infos.

(p.s.: bevor ich in die Cloud wechseln würde, würde ich zunächst Alternativen in Betracht ziehen ;))

[Nadine Schuett]

Since your approach works in cloud, I gladly accept your answer as well and keep crying since Assets automation on Data Center will probably never get touched again by Atlassian... ;-)

And yes, maybe research is better spent on alternatives.