How do I tag a specific user in a comment from automation?

[Meg]

I found a few questions and answers to this, but none of them resolved my issue.

I am trying to create an automation that posts to an issue given some criteria. The comment has a message but needs to tag a specific user. This is NOT a dynamically pulled user, like from the Assignee or Reporter field. Instead, this is just one specific user.

I have tried the following. Please note the example name is switched to myself, but I am NOT trying to tag myself in the comment:

• [~meg-mclees]  or  [~meg.mclees]  or  [~megmclees]  or  [~mmclees]
  • The problem with these first examples are that I don't actually KNOW the internal username
•  [~5c3e40b305d0812fde07b8f5]
  • This is the ID found in the URL when viewing the user's profile
  • Help articles mentioned I should put it in the follwoing format but my AccountID is not present in the URL like the answer suggested: 

    [~accountId:687614:8ffcb0ed-ddbd-4688-8635-c76146f483]

  • Since I can't access the AccountId, I'm at a loss using this resolution

No matter what I try, I can't seem to get it to work. Instead, the @ mention displays "user," as seen below.

I am also experiencing a separate issue where I'm trying to stamp the Assignee field in a comment via automation and that doesn't work either. I tried [~{{assignee}}] but I get the same generic "user" as the below image.

Does anyone have any advice on how to get this automation to tag the desired user? Please note I am NOT an administrator for our Jira Cloud instance.

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Meg 

To mention a user noted in a field in the issue, for example assignee, please try this:

[~accountid:{{issue.assignee.accountId}}]

If you want to send to one specific user, please consider if that person could change.  If so, ask your admin to add a custom user field and send the mention based on the custom field.

Otherwise, create a filter in advanced filters to find the ID of the person (enter the name in a filter and Jira will replace it with the accountID) and then use below, replacing personAccountId:

[~accountid:personAccountId]

Best regards,

Bill

[Meg]

Hi Bill! That worked, thank you so much!

[Darryl Lee]

I know this is an old post, @Bill Sheboy, but using Filters to search for accountID is a great tip.

(I need to be able to tell a client how to do that if they need to update an Automation that uses Advanced Edit to add (not replace) Approvers.)

[Darryl Lee]

For personal reference (and in case anybody ends up looking for this), it ends up looking like this:

{
    "update": {
        "Approvers": [ 
            {
                "add": { "id":"ACCOUNTID" }
            }
        ]
    }
}