Automation : Send email if task description is not as per pre-defined text

[Puneet Gupta]

Hello Experts,

It is a real tough problem for me to implement using Jira automation and hence looking for directions.

The team members are creating sub-tasks in Jira but there are few pre-defined task Summary which they can create. How can I create a Jira automation that sends mail to the sub-task creator if the task summary does not match the pre-define text.

1st question is how and where to store these pre-define text for the task summary.

2nd question is how to send one consolidated mail and scan through all the sub-tasks under the User Stories in the Sprint.

For example :- 

If a creator has created a task with summary as "ABCD" where-as it is not defined in the pre-defined list of 50 text, then an email should go to that creator.

This should happen for all the User Stories in a sprint and a consolidated mail should go to each creator, like if there are 5 such sub-tasks created by same creator "Z" then only 1 mail should go to the creator "Z".

Thanks,

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Puneet Gupta 

This is kind of undoable as searching on text in summary or description, the search is not qualified for this as it will search for 

And on you 1st question, this can't be done. You can't store pre-defined text for a summary in the Jira.

You can create a dummy issue that people can clone, or look for 3rd party solutions, or create a custom field of read-only text.

On creation of the issue have an automation act on replacing the provided summary with the text from the custom field.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Puneet Gupta 

Short answer: you may want to consider using forms or custom fields to constrain and manage input in specific layouts.

Adding to the suggestions from @Marc - Devoteam 

Although one could try to validate the format of the Summary, Description, etc. fields using text searches, regular expressions, etc., the underlying macro and markup syntax would make that quite challenging and a brittle approach. 

For anything other than a simple text layout, one would need to call the REST API to get the Atlassian Document Format (ADF) syntax for the field, and then validate the JSON itself to match the desired "format" prior to extracting / using the data.

As a reminder: Atlassian is sunsetting the plain-text renderer, and so all fields which appear to be plain text will actually become one line, rich text / ADF content...making even simple parsing more challenging.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Thorsten Letschert _Decadis AG_]

Hey @Puneet Gupta

Regarding your second question, looking for a filter subscription might help if that scenario mainly targets the notification of creators (to correct the summaries). Going through the following steps should enable you to send out emails containing lists of wrong items to each creator on a desired schedule:

Start with an appropriate filter that returns items with wrong summaries.

issuetype in subTaskIssueTypes() AND sprint in openSprints() AND creator = currentUser() AND (summary !~ "yourFirstSummary" OR summary !~ "yourSecondSummary" OR ... OR summary !~ "yourLastSummary")

The currentUser() part is essential for further usage, since you want every recipient to be informed about her/his items.

Save your filter with a descriptive name (which will also be shown in the email notifications later) and ensure it's being shared with your audience of interest. For example, grant view permission to a matching group. This group is also necessary for the next step:

Add the subscription via Filter details. Select the group as Recipients and choose your schedule, e.g., Daily.

Regards,
Thorsten

[Thorsten Letschert _Decadis AG_]

P.S. I was also about to suggest adding a custom validator to item creation that ensures no item is created with a wrong summary. However, this would only prevent users from adding wrong summaries to item creation and not to further edits. This is another advantage of the subscription, as notifications are carried out, even if an incorrect summary was entered retrospectively.

[Puneet Gupta]

Thanks for such great suggestions. It is ok if the proposed solution is more about doing a simple text comparison. More than format, currently it is the text that needs to be matched from 50 pre-defined texts.

[Matteo Vecchiato]

Hi @Puneet Gupta ,

About the point 1, try with an automation like this:

About the second, I think for creating a consolidad email for each reporter, it is required script capabilities.

Hope it helps

[Puneet Gupta]

Thanks @Matteo Vecchiato  for the suggestion. So you are suggesting to use the 50 pre-defined texts in 50 variables and then use the If condition to compare the Issue.summary, if Issue is a sub-task.

Ok, will try this and post the results here.

I need not do this on Issue create, I can do it as a pre-scheduled trigger that runs every night.