Setting an Assignee by selection of Custom Dropdown Field in Form

[Charlie Buege]

Hello.  I'm very new to Service Management so if my question is a beginner one and there is training/videos/etc. available to help me figure this out, please feel free to direct me there.

With that said, here is the situation I'm facing.  We've just setup a portal for our users to be able to submit requests for assistance from our IT team.  What we've done is gone ahead and built a Form called 'IT Service Request' and in that form, we have a dropdown called 'Problem Area'.  That contains a list of the different items that our users can choose from:
New Employee Setup/Termination
MS Office
MS Teams
MS OneDrive
etc.

What I want to be able to do is, depending on the choice that is selected, I want to auto-assign these issues to the respective IT personnel to handle the given task.  "New Employee Setup/Termination" to person 1, "MS Office" to person 2, etc.

Each of the people that we want to assign to has a Service Management license assigned to them, so that's already in place.

What I'm unsure of is how to setup the logic to handle the actual assignment.  Is this something that needs to go into a Workflow for when the issue is created?  Do I add Form automation to do this?  Is it a combination of both of these?  Am I looking in the wrong place entirely?

I tried using Form Automation and am trying to figure out how to build the advanced compare condition, but am unsure as to how to structure it.  I thought it would be something like setting up an if condition and then comparing it against "{{issue.[Problem Area]}}" but that doesn't work.

Any advice - a solution, pointing me in the right direction of videos/training, etc. - would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
Charles

[Mark Segall · Accepted solution]

Hi @Charlie Buege - The best way to handle this would be with Components.  They support the concept of a "Component Lead" that can be automatically assigned the issue.  You have a couple options to incorporate this:

1. Switch the Problem Area field to use Component.  Impacts:
   1. Components are multi-select so things can get a little messy if users select multiple Problem Areas on the form.
   2. You would be stifling use of components to just this one purpose
2. Create components one for each problem area and use automation to map the component and force the issue to assign based upon the component.  Impacts:
   1. It's a little more overhead, but much easier for long term maintenance when someone leaves the team to update the component lead vs going back and mucking with the automation rule

Option 2 is probably the best way to go.  So here's a little more detail on that:

1. Create components for each problem area
2. Set the component Lead to the appropriate individual
3. Create automation to bring it all together...

Automation

• TRIGGER: Field Value Changed (Problem Area)
  This will ensure that if the problem area is changed, the assignee will change as well
• ACTION: Edit Issue (Component)

  • {{issue.Problem Area}}

• ACTION: Re-fetch
  This step will re-read the issue now that the component is set
• ACTION: Edit Issue (Assignee)
  Reset the assignee to "Automatic" to enforce assignment based upon component lead
  
  • Automatic

[Charlie Buege]

@Mark Segall 

Thank you for the assistance so far.  I'm making progress, but can't quite get the dropdown in the form and the automation to link up.

I've gotten the Components created as you suggested and I see why you suggest that.  It looks like a good solution for me long-term.

The problem I'm running into now is that while I can create a custom field if I wanted to AND have that custom field show up as available in the 'Fields to monitor for changes' in the automation, I am unable to create a custom field that contains the components that I created.

I WAS able to create an entry in my form called 'Problem Area' and choose the option 'Linked Jira Field' of Components to connect the components to the form as available options.  I cannot, though, get the Automation step of 'Field Value Changed' to allow me to specify the 'Problem Area' option.

One other thing - I didn't understand why you had that code segment of "{{issue.Problem Area}}" under the 'Edit Issue (Component)' step.  Once I chose the option of 'Choose fields to set' and selected the 'Components', I didn't see where to put that code snippet in.

Any suggestions/ideas as to how I can pair these two together?  I have a feeling once I do this, I'll have the functionality that I want.

Thanks,
Charles

[Mark Segall]

Ahh - You're using a custom form so the Problem Area field does not exist as a custom field.  However, since you linked the form to the Components field, you probably don't need the automation.  As the user sets the Problem Area, it is linked to the component and if the component has a component lead, it should automatically assign to the component lead without automation.

[Charlie Buege]

@Mark Segall After trying to turn off the automation, it still isn't working for me.  I'm still not getting the assignee set when I chose from the necessary component.

Anyone else have any ideas as to how to go about doing this?  I'm gonna keep messing around with it, but if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!!

[Mark Segall]

Hmm... Can you confirm that when the issue is created, the component is being set?  If the component is being set it should automatically assign to the component lead.

[Charlie Buege]

No, I am unable to confirm that.  When I create an issue, it sometimes assigns to me but being the creator and administrator of the system, I'm not sure if that's the reason it's happening or not.  Doing it for the other person in our group, then it remains unassigned even though they are listed as the component lead.

[Mark Segall]

The main thing is to verify that the component is actually getting set on the issue.  That will confirm that the Form is properly linking to Jira.  If you don't have a component, the problem lies in the form configuration.  Please share a screenshot of your form's Problem Area field config if it's not working.

[Charlie Buege]

Here's the screenshot of the config.  You can see that the multiselect dropdown has 'Components' as the Linked Jira Field.  That's the only way I could get the components connected to a field in the form.  I don't understand why 'Dropdown' isn't available as an option for components, but if I chose that, the Jira linked field to components goes away.  I do only want a single component select, but I think I'm getting around it by setting my minimum and maximum number of choices to one each.

I also tried an automation addition to see if this would help but it didn't:
Trigger:  Field value changed - Components
Then: Re-fetch issue data
And:  Edit issue fields - Assignee with 'assignee' set for 'Automatic'

[Mark Segall]

Correct - If you're going to link your form to component it adopts the field type and components are multi-select.  Nifty solution by setting the min/max number of options though!

To confirm, the component is being set consistently, it's just not assigning.  Am I correct?

[Charlie Buege]

It's your comment "the component is being set consistently" that I'm unclear on.  Each component has a Name, Description (these two are the same), a Component lead assigned to them, and the Default assignee is set to 'Component lead'.

How would I confirm that it is being set versus assigning?  I thought this was being handled by the automation steps that I described in my last post about when the value of the component changes, etc.

[Mark Segall]

I'm just verifying that every time a new issue is created, it is in fact adding the appropriate component.  For example, for the issues you've created, you can run the following query and no issues are returned:

Project = YOURPROJECT and component IS NOT EMPTY

If no issues are returned, then that part of this configuration is working.  The next thing would be to verify that your component leads are set up as follows:

• Have the permission Assignable User either directly in the permission scheme or by virtue of being members of the Service Desk Team role
• Have been granted JSM Licensing 

[Charlie Buege]

@Mark Segall It's been a busy couple days here, sorry I haven't gotten back to you till now.

After figuring out where to run that query, I could see the subset of tickets that had the components assigned to them.  I then took the users involved and assigned them to the 'Service Desk Team' role as you suggested, it SEEMS to be working now.  I want to do a couple more test assignments to make sure I'm correct, but it looks like it's working now.  If this does fix it for me, I'll let you know/tag the post accordingly, but it's looking positive at least!

Thank you VERY MUCH for all of your help!!  I greatly appreciate it.

Charles