How do I diagnose why a rule isn't triggering?

[Quinn Campbell]

I have a project that is an onboarding task manager system.

New employees are created as Epics from a filled out form. When that form is filled out my first automation is fired which fills in a series of tasks. This fires correctly, no issues.

On the form is a date field which indicates the persons start date. A transition automation uses that information to determine if that Epic needs to move through the process (initial state is before first day, first day, 1st week, 30, 60, 90). The transition task also fires correctly. The Epic moves along based on days as it should.

At each stage of the onboarding (1st day, 1st week, 30, 60, 90) are a series of automations that trigger when an epic is moved from category to category. These fire manually (dragging and epic from 1 to the next) with no issue.

My issue is the stage automations are not firing when moved with the transition automation, but as mentioned they will fire from a manual transition. 

How do I got about figuring out what's wrong, and when you ask for pictures, which part of which automation do you want to see? 

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Quinn Campbell 

To get help diagnosing why a rule is not doing what it should, the following information will be helpful:

1. Screen images that show the components for your entire automation rule.

2. Screen images showing the details from the Audit Log for the execution of the rule, where the results did not match your expectations. There are ">" characters on the right side of the rule log entry. Click all of those to expand all the details available in the log entry.

3. A screen image showing the details of he Rule Details page for the rule.

4. When you find that the rule is not being triggered:

a. A screen image showing the details of the Trigger component.

b. Information about what you did (or what occurred automatically) in Jira that you think should have triggered the rule.

c. Screen images show evidence of that activity and details from the entity (work item, release, sprint, etc.) for which the rule should have been triggered.

5. An explanation of what you think should have occurred (what was your intention for this rule) and what you observed actually occurred.

6. Other screen images for details of rule components would be needed for other type of problems, like diagnosing JQL statements, smart value problems, and branching and condition problems.

You said: 

My issue is the stage automations are not firing when moved with the transition automation, but as mentioned they will fire from a manual transition. 

On the Rule Details page is a check box that needs to be checked to allow an Automation Rule to be triggered based on actions taken in another Automation Rule. By default this box is not checked. I suspect that is the root cause of your problem.

[Quinn Campbell]

That was it! I knew it was going to be something small and silly. Appreciate the help!

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Quinn Campbell 

Without seeing the specifics of your rules / audit log details...

By default, the actions of one rule will not trigger other rules.  This prevents mistakes and runaway rule looping.  When you intentionally want a rule to trigger based on the actions of other rules, in the downstream rule, enable this option in the rule details at the top:

Check to allow other rule actions to trigger this rule. Only enable this if you need this rule to execute in response to another rule.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Taylor Chappell]

In your automation, there should be "Rule Details" and "Audit Log" above the automation nodes. Audit Log should tell you which issues the rule checked and whether it applied successfully or why it failed/didn't run.