Automation rule not capturing label value using match() with colon in regex

[Daphne Casal]

Hi everyone,

I’m setting up an automation rule to automatically link related issues between two projects — a team-managed (MIP) and a company-managed (MPD) project.

Each issue has a label in the format ws:<stream>, for example:

ws:branding 
ws:dns 
ws:integration

In my rule, I’m iterating over all MIP child issues under an epic, and I want to extract the ws: label from each issue to find its matching MPD issue (with the same label).

Here’s the relevant part of my rule:

• Branch: parent = "{{userInputs.mipEpicKey}}"

• Create variable:

{{issue.labels.join(",").match("(ws:[^,\\s]+)").first}}

Log:

Found wsLabel={{wsLabel}} on {{issue.key}}

However, in the audit log, the wsLabel variable is always empty:

Found wsLabel: for MIP-123
Found wsLabel: for MIP-234
Found wsLabel: for MIP-345

All these issues definitely have labels, so I’m confident the data is there.

I also tried escaping the colon like this:

{{issue.labels.join(",").match("(ws\\:[^,\\s]+)").first}}

but it still returns nothing.

 What I’ve checked 

• Confirmed {{issue.labels}} returns all labels (it does).

• Tried contains("ws:") and that works, but I need the exact match (e.g. ws:branding).

• Tried several variants of the regex (ws:.*, ws\\:.*, etc.).

• The rule scope includes both projects.

 Question

Has anyone successfully used match() in Automation for Jira with labels that include a colon (:)?

If so, what regex syntax or workaround did you use to extract the label value?

The end goal is to use that ws: label in a Lookup Issues JQL, e.g.:

parent = "{{userInputs.mpdEpicKey}}" AND labels in ("{{wsLabel}}")

Any help or examples would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Daphne

[Christos Markoulatos]

Hey Dafny

I tried the below and worked for me, check it out:

Test Rule

• Trigger: Manual
• Actions:
  1. Log:
     Labels raw: {{issue.labels}}
  2. Create variable:
     Name: wsLabel Value: {{issue.labels.join(" ").replace("^.*\b(ws:[A-Za-z0-9._-]+)\b.*$","$1")}}
  3. Log:
     Matched wsLabel: {{wsLabel}}

 

Result

Audit log showed:

Labels raw: ws:branding

Matched wsLabel: ws:branding

Hope this helps!