Automation rule if Status is not used

[mborinstein]

I have created a custom field called "In Progress Start Date" and set up Automation so that when a ticket moves to the "In Progress" status the field populates with the date it moved to that status. 

Every now and then, an engineer may forget to move a ticket into "In Progress" and instead move it directly to "In Review" or another later status on the board. How could I use Automation rules so that if the ticket never goes into "In Progress" it will fill the date of when it enters "In Review" instead?

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @mborinstein 

There are at least two ways to help with this scenario:

1) Update the workflow so items must go through the "In Progress" status first.  This would act as a reminder when someone tries to move straight to "In Review".

2) However...if they forgot, as you describe, #1 will not help.  Assuming both the "In Progress" and "In Review" statuses both have an "In Progress" status category, you could do use the statuscategorychangeddate smart value to help:

• trigger: work item transitioned
• condition: check if your "In Progress Start Date" field is empty
• smart values condition: check when in an in progress status
  • first value: {{issue.statusCategory.name}}
  • condition: equals
  • second value: In Progress
• action: edit work item, setting your field with...
  • {{issue.statuscategorychangedate.toDate}}

Kind regards,
Bill

[mborinstein]

Thanks Bill! Would you create this as an additional, separate rule or would you add it on to the existing rule I have in place?

[mborinstein]

I also have a very similar situation where I currently have a custom field get filled when a ticket moves to "Ready for Release". It's possible that an engineer skips that column and moves the ticket straight to "Done". In that case the "Ready for Release" field is an "In Progress" status category but "Done" I assume is another status category. How would you recommend adjusting your rule for that scenario?

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @mborinstein 

For your first question, the rule I suggested could be used to replace your existing one to set the field.

For your second question about the "Ready for Release" and "Done" statuses, I expect those are different categories.  You could use a different rule for that which just checks the destination status to set the field, such as with:

• trigger: work item transitioned
  • where the "to status" is either "Ready for Release" or "Done"
• condition: check if your custom field is empty
• action: edit work item, setting the custom field to {{now}}

Please note well: These rules you are creating seem to be in support of reporting different events in the life of the work item.  Everything is okay when rules are running as expected, however when Atlassian has an incident / outage impacting rules, the values of the dates captured may not be accurate.  Worst case, the rules may not run at all to "catch up" after the outage.  In that case, you may need to do some manual clean-up by reviewing the work item histories.

[mborinstein]

For the first one, do I need From status (blank) To status (In Progress) and then have all the conditions you suggested or do I leave both of those status fields blank?

[Bill Sheboy]

Your criteria for how you want to set the custom field will decide that...

In the rule I suggested, I added a condition to check if the custom field is empty before proceeding.  My assumption was you want to set the field once, even if a work item has re-work and goes backwards in flow.  If that assumption is valid, the "from status" values can remain blank to handle all the cases.

Perhaps pause to consider the different cases / scenarios, and then use that to adjust the rule trigger.  You may even want additional rules for any special cases (e.g., for re-work).

[mborinstein]

Thanks Bill! I tested using your suggestion and it worked perfectly - I really appreciate it!